


Nothing to Remember

by ArwenKenobi



Category: Dollhouse, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Crossover, Doll!John, Friendship, Gen, Memory Loss, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-18
Updated: 2012-11-04
Packaged: 2017-11-12 10:04:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 38,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/489655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenKenobi/pseuds/ArwenKenobi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eighteen months after faking his own death Sherlock Holmes returns to London only to discover that John has sought refuge across the Atlantic and away from himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> I realise that it says crossover with Dollhouse up above here but no knowledge of Dollhouse is required. I’m really using the concept and some of the characters and that’s all explained within. So if that’s the only thing holding you back from reading this do press on; I’d rather you stop reading because you don’t like it and not because you’re not familiar with Dollhouse. If you really would prefer a bit of a primer the Wikipedia article should serve you well. Enjoy! :)

“So, that’s all of it then?”

Sherlock snatches the offered towel from Lestrade and smashes it against his split lip. He hears the quiet pop of an ice pack being activated soon after and he grabs that before Lestrade can offer it for his aching head. He is lucky he isn’t worse off and he does not need a lecture better suited for Lestrade’s daughters to tell him so. He has missed Lestrade in his own way. The incompetence he had encountered while abroad had been incredibly staggering and he had often found himself wishing he had Lestrade at his side but there were just as many things he had not missed about him. 

The capture of Sebastian Moran had been a two man job; he had known that going in. He had planned for it to be a two man job. The man he had had picked out to be the second man had been nowhere to be found and Sherlock had, regrettably, not had enough time to search all of London to find him. He had tried but he was only one man and London was London. He acknowledges that he could have recruited an alternate, an understudy in this final act of his performance, but he had fiercely rejected the idea of another man being at his side at this moment or at any other. What had solidified Sherlock’s decision to work alone had been the certainty that the act of asking another man to help would be more of a betrayal to his friend than the original one.

Well what of it, one small but insistent part of him had argued. He’d betrayed John enough. He’d played at being dead for a year and a half. He’d made John watch him seemingly commit suicide by leaping off a rooftop. He’d told Molly Hooper and his brother that he had faked his death and not John. He’d told Lestrade that had returned before he had told John...

It was a long list. He could argue his reasons but the betrayals remained. What was one more? He’d not listened to that voice, his currently bloodied state certainly proved that, but its message remained. 

“His address?” Sherlock interrupts Lestrade’s list of evidence and procedure and whatnot and brings him back to what really matters here and now. Lestrade stops talking much more agreeably than he would have in the old days, fishes his mobile out of his jacket pocket, and then starts scrolling through his contacts. He texts the information to Sherlock, who already has his own mobile in hand and at the ready. When he reads the text he cannot stop his face from scrunching up. “Eastbourne?” 

“Don’t look at me. He said he wanted to get as far away from London as he could.” 

“Have you been to visit?”

Instead of answering his question outright Lestrade says that they email back and forth from time to time. That’s a lie. From time to time really means ‘very, very rarely’ when it comes from Lestrade. Instead of snapping at him to be specific Sherlock allows him to continue even though he knows that he is not going to enjoy wherever this conversation leads. “I haven’t been to see him,” Lestrade finally answers. “He wants to keep his distance from everything and that includes us.” 

“Still?” 

“Look,” Lestrade snaps through Sherlock’s thoughts, “when John lost you he lost everything. Who he was, what he did, how he fit in the world, everything. There was no way he could go back to the way he was before.” He snatches the towel away from Sherlock and then, after a moment of consideration, reclaims the ice pack as well. Sherlock doesn’t know what Lestrade is trying to accomplish here. Sherlock thinks he knows better than Lestrade does exactly what sort of state of existence John had been lingering in before he’d met him. “You owe that man something more than an apology.” Lestrade bins the towel and ice. “That man, no matter what he does, is ruined for any sort of life without you. You had to have known that when you did what you did.” 

Sherlock had not known for sure but he had suspected. He had decided that a living John was better than a dead John and that was that. He regretted the methods behind keeping John alive but did not regret the final product. “He’s a resilient man,” is all the justification he offers. 

“Yeah well six months without you was plenty for him so off to the sodding Downs he went. He’s probably hoping to bore himself into acceptance.” 

Now would not be a good time to mention that they had spoken of retiring together on the Downs when the time came once or twice. He looks at the address once more to commit it to memory, pockets his mobile, and starts to head off. Lestrade’s arm shoots out with a speed Sherlock had forgotten it possessed and holds him in place. Sherlock does not try to pull out of its grip. Strange. 

“You go as yourself.” It’s an order and not a warning. The tone is not one that Lestrade uses on his daughters now. This tone has been silent for some time now but Sherlock recognizes it as the one specially meant for the mostly homeless and hopelessly drug addicted Sherlock Holmes. “No tricks and no dramatic reveals. Just you and you alone and you’d best be ready to be killed if he decides that’s what needs to be done.” 

It is both a figure of speech and an actual fact all at once. Sherlock has died for John, has been dead for John, and he has relatively recently become fine with the fact that one day he might have to play the actual part. Going by John’s hand is not his first choice but if John pulls his gun on him he has no plans on running. 

“I won’t.” Lestrade holds him tight for a second or two and then lets him run back to Baker Street. 

===================================================================================== 

Mrs. Hudson is waiting for him with open arms, literally and figuratively, when he arrives. Sherlock suspects she has been waiting at the window for his arrival because she throws the door open before he’s even reached it. He allows her to hug him once they’re inside and the door is closed and she squeezes him tight and tuts him for being so silly and brave and for being gone so long. Sherlock returns the embrace with more feeling than he’d been expecting and allows it to continue for much longer than he would normally. Comfort has been something he has denied himself for so long so he feels, strangely but not surprising, no shame in taking the bucket loads of comfort being offered to him by his landlady. Mrs. Hudson quiets and just holds him when she realises what this hug really is and only lets go when Sherlock’s hands fall to his side. 

He’s offered tea and a sit in Mrs. Hudson’s own flat but Sherlock insists on upstairs. She tries to talk him out of it but he won’t hear any of it. He deserves to find whatever he finds up there. Mycroft told him that John had moved away initially but then had moved back. John had moved out again on the six month anniversary and had left Mycroft no forwarding address. Mycroft had of course found it out and had John under surveillance but had not sought him out. “He made it very clear that he wanted nothing to do with me. I have obliged him as much as I am capable of doing considering your request of me.” 

Sherlock had asked Mycroft to watch over John and despite the fact that Mycroft has done so he cannot help but be suspicious. He reminds himself that it is unwise to theorize without data and steps into the flat after Mrs. Hudson. It is eerily neat. It screams order and military and regiment. Nothing of his has been moved. Sherlock sees that the laboratory equipment had been moved and then brought back and returned to their proper places but other than that the place could very well serve as a museum. The only things missing are the experiments themselves and those had only been moved due to public health regulations. Also Sherlock’s violin is missing but Sherlock suspects sentiment rather than theft in that absence. 

“He kept everything the same,” Mrs. Hudson is telling him. “He moved, worked, and cooked around everything. I packed some things up but he brought it all back before I could give it all away. I told him more than once that it wasn’t healthy but he didn’t listen to me. Didn’t listen to anybody. Then he up and left with nothing but a note with a forwarding address for any post he got.” 

Lestrade had made it sound bad but Sherlock had wondered how much of that was true and how much of it was to drive home a point. Mycroft really hadn’t told him anything at all and he never believed anything Mycroft told him when he asked him directly. Mrs. Hudson would never lie to him. He sits in his old chair and Mrs. Hudson, after a moment of consideration, settles in John’s. “Was it bad?” he doesn’t mean to sound as quiet and, alright he’ll admit it, as nervous as he does but it can’t be helped now. 

Again she pauses and this time it’s because she wants to spare his feelings. He tells her that he needs to hear it and then she says that it had been bad. “He was awful,” she whispers, strained. “Like his heart had stopped beating but the rest of him hadn’t caught on to it. He did what he could. He tried to work, he tried to get going, he fought to clear your name like I’ve never seen anyone fight for anything and when he managed that he was worse. I think he thought that if he cleared your name he’d get you back, even though he knew it was impossible.” 

He remembers the haunted man he’d seen at St. Bart’s. He remembers what sort of life he’d deduced John had lived once he’d been invalided home. Lestrade was not one prone to florid turns of phrase but he finds that what information Lestrade had relayed to him in Camden had been correct. “I wanted him to live,” he tells Mrs. Hudson. 

“He did try but you didn’t leave him with much to work with. You change people, dear.” She folds her hands in her lap and fixes her gaze on them. “You make it impossible to go back to what they were.” She’s not sure whether that’s a compliment or a curse and Sherlock is unable to find out himself. He gets up and takes one of Mrs. Hudson’s hands . He waits until she looks up at him before he speaks. 

“I will fix it.” He will do what he has to do. He will do anything to fix John, to make John understand why he did what he did. He does not hope for forgiveness but he hopes for them to understand each other. He hopes for John to come back to London with him because John changes people too and Sherlock cannot go back to the way he was before either. 

Mrs. Hudson smiles, the gesture is hopeful but there’s doubt behind her kind eyes. “I hope he lets you.” 

================================================================================= 

Sherlock throws a bag together and is on the last train to Eastbourne out of Victoria Station. He knows that he should take the opportunity to sleep now after the journey from France to England and everything that’s happened since but his mind will not quiet. His mind never does but it does not still enough to allow for sleep. By the time the hour and a half journey is over he has deduced everything about the train, the staff, and the passengers, and he knows he is dangerously close to getting tossed out before the train stops. 

It’s half one in the morning and even he knows that it is more than a bit not good to knock anybody up at this hour unless it was an emergency but he sets off to find John’s new place of residence (a flat? a house? What was he looking for?) but finds that now his tired brain demands to rest. It refuses to read street signs and locating the tiny numbers on the buildings becomes impossible. He finds the nearest inn and pays double for the late hour before he collapses on the bed fully clothed. 

Much to Sherlock’s ire, when he rises the next morning, he still cannot find the address. He checks it twice from his phone. He refers to the scrap of paper in the good doctor’s handwriting that Mrs. Hudson passed on to him before he left and texts his brother to be sure. All three sources say the same thing. 

That does not make the address magic itself into existence. Shortly thereafter he comes to the conclusion that there is no Doctor John H. Watson in practice in Eastbourne at all. He tries every doctor in the area over the weekend he spends there and not a single one is John. No one in the area even looks like him. He calls Mycroft and asks, heatedly, about his security and how it is managing to keep tabs on an address that does not exist and a man who is not here. “My latest report says he’s at work at Eastbourne General Hospital.” Mycroft for all his own brilliance is a fundamentally lazy man and cannot be arsed to be sure of his own sources sometimes. He parrots back what is in front of him because believing the alternative is unacceptable. 

Sherlock has evaded security five times today alone looking for John at the hospital. “He’s not on staff there.” 

Mycroft’s voice goes cold and tells him that he’ll text him back with the correct information. Sherlock may not like his brother but he can’t help the smile that crosses his face when he imagines what awaits his staff. He considers looking up Harriet Watson but outright dismisses her as knowing anything about her brother. No matter how bad John was he would never reach out to her for help. He cannot let the possibility slip from him though so he texts Mycroft to try her. He has never met John’s sister and he would like to keep it that way. 

While he waits for Mycroft to get back to him he sets himself up at the nearest coffee shop with his laptop and hacks into John’s email. There is nothing of importance there. There are a few scattered emails from Lestrade and John’s sister but nothing of any importance. Lestrade is trying to be helpful and carry on as normal and Harry is demanding visits, and money, and host of other irrelevant things. This is really the extent of his communication aside from some extremely irritating spam and some work related emails as well. Mostly committee work for purchasing new equipment it seems for job he apparently does not have. Something about the sender buzzes in Sherlock’s brain but he lets it lie in favour of conducting some research into John’s campaign to clear his name. His last instruction to John had been to believe that he was a fraud but he had not been able to. If he’d played along Sherlock could have been home sooner but John had believed in him more than Sherlock could ever have anticipated. 

In six months John, and Lestrade and Mycroft it would appear, had brought the world back to his side. He’d published a book, of course he would accept the book deal when Sherlock wasn’t there to berate him during the writing process, and had assisted with the inquest that had followed after the jump. All the evidence was there if one knew where to look and it seemed that John had known how to get Mycroft moving and pull away the man Richard Brook until Jim Moriarty was all that remained. 

There are few attempts at interviews that he manages to pull up. John looks as bad as he’s been described. The man is haggard and haunted and looks not long for the world himself. He never responds to any questions except for the same sentence that had been his final blog entry: He was my best friend and I’ll always believe in him.

_You’ve ruined him for any life after you._

You change people, dear. You make it impossible to go back to what they were. 

Before Sherlock has an opportunity to get angry at John and his stupid, bloody, loyalty his mobile chirps. ****_Sister also has Eastbourne address. Return at once. MH._

What have you found? SH

Cannot be discussed like this. Text when you’re at the Diogenes Club. MH 

“Cannot be discussed like this” when said by Mycroft meant “I haven’t found anything yet but I will by the time you get here.” This was his brother asking him for an hour and half, closer to two considering the additional tube ride to the Diogenes Club, to sort what has happened. There is one thing that Mycroft must know though. 

**_Is he alive?_**

Sherlock is pulling out of Eastbourne station when he finally gets a reply. 

**_Yes_**. 

Sherlock lets out a breath that he hadn’t realised he was holding. He is not relaxed, he will not be until he sees John alive for himself, but at least knows that all of this has not been in vain. He can find John, he will find John, and we will accept whatever punishment John sees fit to give whether that’s a bullet in the brain or a kick out the door. 

A John Watson who is alive and hates him is worlds better than a John Watson who likes him and is dead. He has been theoretically ready for this since fleeing England and now it’s time to see if the theory hold true or if John will surprise him yet again. 


	2. Part Two

The Diogenes Club does have its appeal. Sherlock is not a member himself, all the tradition and all the pomp and circumstance involved in a club of unclubbable men is too tedious for his taste, but there was something to be said for sitting in a room where uttering a single word merited eviction from the building. It was a rare occasion that he took advantage of his brother’s status as a senior member but he has spent a mildly pleasant afternoon in utter silence on one or two occasions. He has not set foot in the Diogenes Club since John had psychosomatically limped into his life and he plans to never set foot in it again after this meeting with Mycroft has concluded. He may not know what has happened, Mycroft may not have known what has happened until very recently, but it already is not good. Say what he will about Mycroft’s methods and Mycroft’s security but it was very, very seldom fooled by people that were not directly related to Mycroft Holmes.

Sherlock has been sitting in the Stranger’s Room for three and a half minutes when Mycroft walks in. He sits down without preamble and hands a file to Sherlock. “Have you ever heard of the Rossum Corporation?”

A few days ago Sherlock truthfully could have said he had never heard of it. His brain buzzes at him and pulls up a mental image of John’s email account and the emails about hospital equipment. The sender had been that company name. He exchanges a look with Mycroft and Mycroft merely urges Sherlock to open the file. When Sherlock does nothing Mycroft eventually starts speaking.

“You mustn’t blame yourself for ignoring the emails. To the best of my knowledge John was still a practicing doctor.”

A doctor, yes, but not one specializing in ordering new MRI machines for a job he did not have, says Sherlock, with some vitriol, to Mycroft. His brother ignores him and continues. “That is its public face,” he allows, which sends Sherlock back to a time when Mycroft had been his tutor and it does nothing to inspire any confidence. “For some time there have been some whispers about another service it provides. A highly questionable one if not an explicitly illegal one.” 

Sherlock opens the file at this point and waves a hand to silence Mycroft. He skips the reports about Rossum’s MRI business and other drug and pharmaceutical dealings and cuts right into a few lawsuits and complaints of irregular or unwarranted brain scans. Following that are incidents involving disappearances of key stakeholders, protestors, and strange medical experiments.

John does not own stock in anything let alone a medical company. If he had recently decided to do so, Sherlock had left him his trust in the will after all, Mycroft would have included it in the file. John also does not frequently prescribe or submit himself to brain scans. 

“Keep reading,” Mycroft orders softly. 

“What happened to your security?” he asks snidely as he flips through some more missing persons reports. 

“They are not security agents. One is a car salesman and the other one is a bartender, not that they know or remember that of course.”

Just as Sherlock is about to put the folder down he finds two missing persons reports who have been flagged in Anthea’s precise handwriting. One is the bartender and one is the car salesman. Both are from America and both have been missing persons for nearly five years.

“This did not come up in the background checks?” Aside from being missing persons neither of these people have the correct qualifications, psychological or otherwise, to have even been recruited by Mycroft’s people. The following pages present the same two people with radically different reports, everything from their names to their brain scans are completely different. 

“I’m afraid not,” Mycroft admits. “Their references were excellent and their qualifications suburb. They have served me admirably, or at least they did until I sent them to watch John. Then they were reporting to someone else. To Rossum in fact.” 

“What does Rossum have to do with John?” 

“What makes a car salesman and a bartender pass an intensive and invasive process to become one of my ‘minions’ as you so call them.” 

“Nothing,” Sherlock answers. “There is nothing drawing them to this type of work and no potential way they would be able to make it past the first interview unless – “ 

“Unless there is an extremely talented forgery and infiltration involved, in which case there certainly is and it is swiftly being dealt with, and these people believe what they are and in fact _are_ what they are.”

Mycroft stands, takes the file back and passes Sherlock his mobile. There’s a video cued up of one of the men. He is sitting in a chair looking rather comfortable considering the state of his head and the location he is in. He plays it and a voice off camera asks the man his name. “Kilo” he says serenely. “Did I fall asleep?”

“Do you know where you are?”

“A room.”

“Do you know who Sheldon Jones is?”

“No.”

“That’s your name.”

“My name is Kilo.”

It goes on in a similar vein for a few more minutes before Mycroft takes the phone away. Questions are asked and the man in chair might as well be a child for all the help he is. It is not faked and it is not a disguise, or if it is it is the best that Sherlock has ever seen. The vacancy in the eyes however is something that cannot be fully simulated. The man is either brain dead or brain washed, and that’s underneath whatever had been done previously to get him past Mycroft. The car salesman’s name is Sheldon Jones, the name he worked under as Mycroft’s men on John Watson watch was Kevin Houston, and all this man is answering to is a code name. Kilo.

“What did the other answer to?” Sherlock scoffs. “Lima? Or perhaps Juliet?”

“Victor, actually.” Mycroft corrects. “They both have since vanished. I do not expect to see either of them again in any persona.” 

“Persona?”

Mycroft sighs. “It has been brought to our attention that Rossum has a secret business endeavour. One involving programmable human beings; people whose original personalities are removed and their bodies are given different, customizable ones for short periods of time for whatever the buyer of this service has planned.”

Sherlock does not believe it. He cannot believe it. Not because it is impossible, but because they are discussing a mind wiping process backed by a corporation that John received several emails from. John has been missing for a year now.

“What would Rossum want with John?” He hates asking his brother for anything, especially an opinion on something as important as this but it seems that he has missed several things with respect to his friend. Mycroft, as much as Sherlock is loath to admit, has the unbiased eye in this situation.

“I don’t think that is the question that you should be asking, brother.”

“John would not work for Rossum. Not in this sort of endeavour if it exists.” Sherlock will not believe this exists. He cannot do it.

“I do not think John is – “

“Stop!” Sherlock’s yell is so loud that the man outside the door to the Stranger’s Room sticks his head in and glowers at them. Mycroft gives him a nod of apology and the head disappears. “They’ve done something -”

“Yes they have. They helped him to clear your name.”

===================================================================================== 

It is very easy for Sherlock to forget that Jim Moriarty had had more enemies than himself. Sherlock was easily the most fascinating and most important to him but there were other people he actively worked to anger. The Rossum Corporation appeared to be another one of those. Another file of Mycroft had outlined in great detail Rossum’s war with Moriarty. With every level of Rossum, too. He threatened the MRI business, the drugs business, and the Dollhouse business. 

Dollhouse. That was what these places were being called in whispers and in dark alleys. These places that erased minds and hired out bodies. A part of Sherlock is genuinely curious about the technology and the idea but the rest of him sharply reminds him that John has been blackmailed into working for them or is a prisoner or worse.

He doesn’t think about what ‘worse’ could mean. Mycroft cannot track how or when Rossum first contacted John but they had helped with wiping away all that remained of Richard Brook when they became aware of what John was trying to do. Sherlock had thought Mycroft had helped John more with that aspect but Mycroft had denied it. “He wanted nothing to do with me. In his eyes I was just as responsible for your death as Moriarty was.” 

_I asked him to do it, John. It was all part of the plan._

How was John to know that though? There was no reason for John to see a plan. That had been the point and it had worked perfectly. Sherlock doesn’t think he has ever been this annoyed, this disappointed, that a plan worked precisely as well as he’d designed.

Mycroft traced the two operatives, Sherlock refused to call them Dolls, to an establishment in Los Angeles. Of course they would take John across the Atlantic and away from anyone who recognized him. John would write emails to Lestrade to show that he was alive and well, or as well as one could be when one was pretending to be in Eastbourne, when really he was doing who knew what to pay for clearing Sherlock’s name. 

“I don’t think that is all,” Mycroft had warned him before he’d boarded the plane. “Clearing your name he could have done alone. It would have taken longer but he could have done it and he knew it. That should be troubling to you since it certainly is to me. There’s something else he’s protecting here.”

Whatever it was he could stop protecting it. Whatever arrangement that the Dollhouse had made with John was over. He would steal John away from there if he had to and they would deal with whatever fallout happened together. This was all of course assuming John would speak to him after all this. 

The seatbelt light flashes on and the pilot announces that they are flying through turbulence. They are six hours from LAX and this was the fastest flight that Mycroft could secure. No flight can possibly be fast enough but Sherlock is ready for whatever he faces. He will get John out and get them home. There will be no negotiation; he will be taking what is his and that is that. It does not quiet the sick feeling in his stomach that things are not going to be that easy.

The flight lands on schedule. Sherlock likes to think that is because of his entire brain power being fixated on urging it to be so but he knows he has Mycroft to thank for that. Aside from Mycroft’s usual efficiency in such matters he gathers that some less than subtle threatening has gone on as well as a touch of equivocation about what precisely the reason for this private jet, and the need for haste, is.

Unfortunately finding himself eight hours behind what he conceives as normal does his head in. Normally jumping in between time zones does little to him, much to John’s annoyance on the few international cases they’d taken together. On little jaunts John was perfectly fine with but anything beyond three hours did John’s head in as bad as Sherlock’s was now. John’s remedy to fix that was to sleep until time made sense again. Sherlock was loathe to waste time on something like sleep but he has to admit, as he stumbles into the exorbitant hotel room not far from the Dollhouse’s location dictated by Mycroft’s intelligence and cross checked at least five times by Anthea and the others, he needs it. He needs it almost more than he had when he’d stepped off the train in Eastbourne three days ago.

Had it really only been three days since everything had gone to shit? That is the last thought he has before sleep claims him.

When he rises two in the afternoon has just gone and he exits the building with all haste. He reminds himself that he will not regain the time that he has lost to sleep by running faster. What he will do is be sloppy and sloppiness is something he cannot afford. 

He sets himself up at a Starbucks where he can see cars vanishing into a tunnel. American money is frustrating to contend with but he manages to procure coffee and a sandwich of some sort as he sits down and spies on the road from behind the newspaper. Not one of his more inventive tactics but it serves its purpose. The road is not his best choice, the building above it however seems to be. The building which is a regional office for the Rossum Corporation. It is glaring oblivious and highly unimaginative but there is a reason that the best place to hide is often in plain sight. 

He drains his coffee, leaves the newspaper on the table and leaves Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective and genius, in the cafe. It is Sherlock Holmes the confused and lost tourist who exits the cafe. Adopting another personality is almost a relief.

==============================================================================

Getting into the building proves disturbingly elementary. It is incredibly easy to infiltrate an environment as long as you project confidence and look like you know what you’re doing there and where you’re going. 

Sherlock begins to wonder if it had been a good idea to refuse the gun that Mycroft had tried to get onto his person. There is most certainly one smuggled into his luggage but that is of no help to him now. He’s been in this service lift for ten minutes attempting to find the correct way to swipe his pilfered key card to gain access to the basement. Eventually he forgoes the keycard in favour of blocking the doors and manually making the lift take him to the basement. No alarms go off and no one is waiting for him down there when the doors open. There is just yet another service elevator. This one opens without him doing anything and sends him down even deeper underground.

He straightens his jacket and stands at the ready in front of the lift doors. He may not have a gun on him but he is far from unarmed. He has a mission and he will succeed in it. 

**If you kill yourself trying to liberate me I am not going to be impressed.**

He can almost see John standing next to him, in the reflection of the lift doors. Calm and ready to fight but still taking the time to offer either useless or irrelevant advice. Of course John would not be impressed with him if he died. He has no intention of dying. He is not that cruel.

**The evidence would suggest otherwise. I mean thanks for keeping me alive and all but a postcard would have been lovely. You could have managed something and I would have understood the message eventually. I’m not stupid.**

He shuts the gates of his Mind Palace and hopes John will stay in there. He has enjoyed John’s company in this way over the while. It was an indulgence that he rarely allowed himself but an indulgence he needed and craved as badly as he had cases in the old days, but there is no place for him here.

The lift doors open and he steps into a lobby of sorts. There is a reception, front desk like thing there and a girl who is typing furiously behind it. “Miss DeWitt is expecting you, Mr. Holmes.”

Sherlock almost lets the lift doors close again but he throws out a hand at the last moment to keep it open. He steps off and cautiously approaches the desk. “Excuse me?”

“Right that way, sir.” The girl does not even look away from her computer. “Miss DeWitt does not value delay.”

**If they wanted you dead they would have done it by now. They obviously know you’re here.**

“Shut up.”

“Sorry?”

“Nothing. Just this way then?” He takes a deep breath and walks in.


	3. Part Three

An Englishwoman’s voice greets him but Sherlock turns his attention to the office he’s in instead. It’s neat as a pin, functional and comfortable at the same time. The space is efficient (the slightly nicer and cozier chairs over by the alcohol for clients and guests, the harder chairs closer to her desk for staff) for her needs but can also serve as precisely whatever whoever is in the room needs.

“Mr. Holmes? Would you like a seat?” She offers him one of the ‘staff’ chairs and Sherlock takes a moment to look at Miss DeWitt before making any sort of response. She’s a harsh featured woman of a chilly temperament to the majority of the world. There is the potential for caring there considering what Sherlock gathers she must be in charge of but it is strictly regulated and given it only in exceptional circumstances or for professional dealings.

“I’m here for John Watson.”

“Yes, I know that,” the hand remains extended toward the chair. “We’re going to discuss that once you sit down.”

“Now there’s no need for that. Page him up here or shall I do it for you?”

“You may try,” she challenges, smile polite but menacing. “Judith has been here long enough to recognize my voice. Besides I think we both know that he is not going to answer.”

Sherlock reaches into his jacket as if he were going to draw a gun. She is not impressed and it oozes out of every part of her. “Come now,” she scoffs. “We both know you’re unarmed so don’t insult my intelligence and sit down before I do something I may regret.”

Sherlock makes a move for the desk but he is stopped when Miss DeWitt produces a gun and aims it levelly at his heart. It is real, it is loaded, the safety is off, and she is quite serious about shooting. Well, he allows, mostly serious except for one thing. She’ll say it any second now.

“I promised Doctor Watson several things when it came to you. I never did agree that I would not kill you but I understand that he will be incredibly put out if I do put a bullet in you.” She directs him to the chair with her eyes. “Now take the seat, stop trying to play the hero, and listen. John is here willingly and I think you know that so there’s no reason for any of this.” She gestures to the space between them with the gun this time. “Fair?”

**You’d best sit down then.**

Sherlock sits down.

The woman smiles again. “Lovely,” she grins. “Now you are Sherlock Holmes and I am Adelle DeWitt. I am in charge of this House and all goings on inside it. I write up the contracts, I book the engagements, I select the Actives for each engagement, and I make sure everyone here is kept happy in whatever format they wish to take their happiness.”

There was only one possible thing, and thing was the word, that an Active could be. “How does someone without a mind be happy, Miss DeWitt?”

“Quite easily, in fact.” She takes a file off her desk and hands it to Sherlock. Inside is a brain scan and Sherlock refuses to look at it. DeWitt goes on anyway. “They’re little more than children after everything’s been swept away. Keeping them happy amounts to making sure they’re safe, warm, fed, and given some activities to do from time to time. I will show you all this later – “

“I’m not staying,” Sherlock snaps. “I’m here for John.”

“I know that and he does too.”

“Does he?”

Sherlock wants to pull the words out of DeWitt’s brain and back into his but the words were gone before he even thought of them. He needs to know John’s status, this is essential to his next step, but there is a power of delusion in not knowing. In not knowing he can continue to assume that John is a staff member, that he’s an advisor or a doctor or security for the House or for the ‘Actives’ or both. Speaking the question aloud gives DeWitt the ability to tell him that John isn’t John but Sherlock’s need to know everything has always trumped everything.

Sherlock is quickly proven right about DeWitt’s capacity for caring; the brown eyes soften and he voice loses a touch of its edge. “He did when he came here a year ago. He knew you’d come find him one day, though I will say the precise phrasing was “I hope” rather than “I know” but he was trying to fool the both of us and we both knew it.”

He locks onto that sentence and pushes back the new data. He pushes it back, he locks away the void in his head (Mind Palace John yelps to get this thing out of the Great Hall before somebody gets hurt), and restrains the heart that is trying to burst out of his chest. It takes every iota of his concentration to remain seated and sane at the knowledge John Watson does not exist. 

**I do so exist.**

_This doesn’t count_

**No, I mean I actually do. Turn your ears back on and listen to the woman for God’s sake.**

Sherlock asks Miss DeWitt to repeat herself. Her eyes are almost kind when she does.

“He is not gone, Mr. Holmes. He is safe as houses with us and he trusted us to keep him that way.” Sherlock attempts to let her know exactly what he thinks about that statement but finds that he has no air in his lungs to spare. It’s just as well he decides; such an insulting comment deserves no reply. What would possess John to think that he could trust these people, especially with his mind? John didn’t trust anybody except him and Sherlock didn’t trust anybody but John.

But he hadn’t been here had he? He’d been out keeping John safe but John hadn’t known that so he’d done this. But why this? It couldn’t be just because they had helped him clear his name. DeWitt was not lying when she said John was here willingly. Sherlock was certain of that. Nor had DeWitt been lying or equivocating or deceiving in any way when she’d said that John had hoped he would come for him. Had _known_ that he would. How could he have known? The plan had worked perfectly. 

Mycroft’s voice floats through his head reminding him that he suspects something other than keeping Sherlock safe. John could have done that alone. 

“Dr. Watson was doing quite admirably on his own,” Miss DeWitt is saying now. She gets up and moves to the other side of the room to retrieve the decanter of brandy and two glasses. “He really was loathe to accept the help but we gave him some extra information, information your brother I’m sure would have provided had Dr. Watson a mind to ask him for it, but that was the arrangement. No tricks, no hidden prices, no catches. It was a mutually beneficial relationship and we were both content to leave it at that.” She pours the glasses and ushers one toward Sherlock. “Some of our Actives end up as Actives for certain reasons for certain actions, your friend was not to be one of them. I made sure he understood that.”

John may not be as brilliant as he was – that was wrong; John was brilliant but a different sort of brilliant – but he was not one to throw his lot in with an unknown corporation on a hope or a whim. No matter how hurt or desperate (not desperate, Sherlock amends. Dedicated is the ‘d’ word he wants here) he would have made sure this was done properly and to his satisfaction. 

This was also the man who had tried to die for him as well. This was a man who had made it his personal mission to keep him safe. If John suspected Sherlock’s life was in danger he could expected to do all kinds of stupid things. Sherlock knew this because he has seen it and because, as the evidence would suggest, he is more than willing to do all kinds of stupid things to keep John safe too.

“He began to suspect just as he was finishing writing the book.” DeWitt confirms Sherlock’s thoughts before he can voice them and never has it felt like a loss before now. “He asked us to fly him out without letting it on to Mycroft and we complied. He pitched us a contact, we accepted it, and we obeyed his wishes. He’s been with us ever since.”

“Why?” He needs to hear it.

“I was his business partner not his confidant,” she reminds him. “What he did say was that if anyone found him it was best that he literally had no answer for them. Your brother has demonstrated that interrogating an Active gains you nothing. There is nothing more basic that any interrogator can send them down to. Our Actives are in a blank slate stage.”

Blank slates still have traces of what was on them before. Slight ones but traces nonetheless. Sherlock isn’t sure if he would do well to keep that in mind or forget it. “There is another reason.”

“He didn’t say it to me. Do I need to say it to you?”

As much as Sherlock knows part of this was to keep him safe, if there was any Sherlock alive to keep safe, Sherlock also knows that John wanted to forget. Considering the portrait that had been painted by Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson there was no other reason. He wanted to not exist but was not the type of man to put a bullet in his brain in the face of despair – he was the type to fade away into nothing if he made the choice to fade and he certainly was not going to do it if there was a chance that his suffering was for a reason or had a potential positive end result. It was an ideal solution to both of John’s dilemmas and Sherlock cannot say he blames him for leaping into such an arrangement. Sherlock cannot say he would not have seized the same opportunity under the guise of an experiment either. 

No,” he admits finally. He takes the drink he has been ignoring and drains it. “No, I don’t need to hear it.” He sets the glass down, DeWitt pours him some more. “What are the terms of his contract?”

DeWitt slides it out of another file on her desk but doesn’t allow Sherlock to look at it. “Dr. Watson’s contract is unique. A typical volunteer signs themselves over for five years. Their original personality is stored on what we call a wedge, hard disk if you would prefer, and we upload whatever personalities our programmer creates to satisfy our clients’ needs into their brains. This can be anything at all and all of our Actives understand that before they are wiped. After five years their original personality is restored, they receive whatever payment has been negotiated, and they leave. “

Sherlock’s heart tightens into a ball until is almost nonexistent. Four more years without John? There was no possible way he could survive or that he would stand for it. Miss DeWitt smirks at him knowingly. Fortunately for Sherlock’s bubbling rage she is in a sharing mood. “As I said, his contract is different.”

“Specify.”

“Most importantly for him he wanted a limit on the type of engagements he can be sent on. He specified no amorous encounters of any kind and no murdering the innocent and all that.” She laughs a little at a memory. “He made quite clear that he was fine with illegal activity so long as it didn’t fall into anything he considered untoward. He supplied a list and I have adhered to it. The second thing he asked was that we help him set up the pretense that he was living away from London. That was easy enough to handle. The last thing refers to the length of his stay with us.”

Of course, Sherlock smiles, John would have something in the paperwork that said his time at the Dollhouse was over once Sherlock arrived to claim him. He tames the smile and turns it into something more neutral; if that had been the case this entire conversation needn’t have taken place.

“Five years it what he signed up for if one Sherlock Holmes never darkened our door or if he appeared and was not agreeable to the following term,” she begins. “That term is that the contract is up once Mr. Holmes serves the equivalent of whatever time he has been ‘dead’ as his handler. Handlers, by the by, are the staff members that accompany our Actives on engagements and ensure their safety. You’ve been gone eighteen months, yes?”

Sherlock nods.

“Then you’d both be free to go eighteen months from tomorrow. You’ll forgive me for not starting today, of course. The day is almost out.”

“And if I say that I can just break him out of here, body and mind and everything, and ignore your contract with John what then?”

“Aside from the fact that I can have this contract upheld in a court of law, and believe me I can Mr. Holmes even considering the circumstances, this is not John Watson’s contract with us but our, rather my, contract with him.” What little warmth was in her voice is now gone. “For whatever reason he decided he needed to not exist for a time. In my name going on that document I promised I would not bring him back unless the five years are up or you adhere to the last term.” She slides a piece of paper across to Sherlock. “. That is a contract between you and him and I don’t take you as the type who right now, after everything, is going to throw the contract away.”

The contract is brief, only outlining the duration of the contract. Sherlock still very much wants to throw the contract in Adelle DeWitt’s face, rush the building, find John’s body and mind and get them out. He could reunite the two. Just give him time and some equipment he is sure to be able to replicate whatever process they do here.

And John would have known that when he’d decided this. He had known that there was a very real chance that he would do just that. Could he disappoint John yet again? Would John stay with him when he woke up and saw that his wishes had been ignored yet again?

This is different, Sherlock argues. This is completely different than pretending to be dead to keep him safe.

But it is no different. It is very near the same. This situation will be harder because he will see John everyday but it will not be John. It will be whatever John is without what makes him John or whatever he is programmed to be. He will be dead but not all at once. 

Come to think about it, it’s no different into how John must have felt near the end of the sixth months. He suspected that Sherlock was alive but could not be sure. There was no way to find out for certain and no way to get anyone to tell him. Sherlock doubts he ever would have suspected Molly and he hadn’t told Mycroft he was alive until after John would have come here. He was keeping Sherlock safe by removing an unknown element from the plans as well as keeping himself sane. 

It was also a form of penance. Sherlock is not sure if John intended this when he signed the contract but it is functioning as one. Sherlock had known he would have no hope in redeeming himself to John. He was fully prepared to be thrown out of John’s life and never spoken to again if it meant that John would live. He was also prepared to submit to whatever John decided would be penance for his crimes against their friendship.

This might be one way to start.

Sherlock holds out his hand for a pen and signs the contract with the option stating that John will be free a year and a half from today because Sherlock will serve a year and a half as his handler.

“Thought you would,” DeWitt smiles. It isn’t a particular triumphant one but Sherlock averts his eyes nonetheless. “Welcome to the Dollhouse, Mr. Holmes.”


	4. Part Four

Miss DeWitt does give him a copy of John’s contract after all. Apparently John had said it was fine, or so his signature on yet another document stamped by the Rossum Corporation said. Sherlock signs many other stamped pieces of paper. There were formal acceptance of terms of employment, non disclosure agreements, and other wonderful bits of paper securing his service as well as his silence. Part of him wants to revolt, to demand to see John – or rather Charlie as he is known here. Charlie. He wants to see Charlie who is really John without knowing that he was, and is, John but doesn’t at the same time. He keeps quiet and doesn’t demand anything. He nods, picks up his copies of the documents, and follows DeWitt’s order that he go home and report in for work tomorrow morning.

The door softly clicks closed behind him as he takes in the hotel room that is to be his home until the contracts are up. It is extravagant in the way that penthouse suites are extravagant without being offensively so. In many ways it is as if his bedroom, the sitting room, and the kitchen at 221b have been transplanted, blended, and set up in this room. As Sherlock closely inspects some of the furniture he finds that the transplant part is thankfully untrue but the sentiment is there. It’s his half of 221b. Nothing to even hint of John’s presence in that flat is here. He is certain that that it should hurt, certain that it will hurt in the days to come, but right now he is grateful for John’s continuing absence.

If there’s one thing he has to get through his head it is that for all intents and purposes John Watson is dead. Or if imagining him dead is too much or too close to the truth he needs to think of him as beyond his reach. He cannot be looking into the eyes of Charlie the Active and be expecting to see John. This business remains in business because it delivers a satisfactory service. Sherlock expects to be shown the science of it tomorrow. He doesn’t know whether this desire to be told conclusively is for his own sanity or for John’s.

He takes out a marker from the desk and writes in large letters _Charlie ≠John_ on the wall. He leaves enough space for him to keep a tally of the days like a prisoner would on their cell wall.

He then throws himself on the floor and rings Mycroft. It only rings once. 

“Coming home now I suspect?” There’s a hope in his voice that Sherlock knows he would die before admitting it was there. Normally Sherlock would take full advantage of this but it is with a heavy heart that he tells Mycroft exactly when he’ll be coming home. Mycroft goes through every single solitary word of the contracts – Sherlock scans the bits of paper he signed along with a copy of John’s - and says he’ll have his solicitors take a look at them. Sherlock tells him that he suspects they’ll hold since he was allowed to leave the building with them. Mycroft pretends that he doesn’t hear him. Arrangements are made, check in times are decided upon, and Mycroft implores him to take notes and send him updates on the organization.

“Making the most of this situation are we?”

“You would do the same.”

Sherlock cannot say he can argue with that but he ends the call there. He looks up at the writing on the wall. _Charlie ≠John_

Don’t you forget it now.

**I give you twenty minutes.**

_Go away._

**You sure?**

Sherlock isn’t but John doesn’t say anything further.

=====================================================================================

The Dollhouse could almost be considered a spa if you were not to look past what was immediately present. If you knew nothing of the organization and did not look too closely at the people in it all you would see would be some people enjoying a holiday. Once you looked closer you saw vacancy in the guests’ eyes and in their voices, their relaxed nods when spoken to, and the pure and innocent smiles not meant to be seen on adults, you understood why every fibre of your being was screaming that something wasn’t right here.

When the Actives were not on assignment they were pampered. DeWitt listed a host of amenities from the five star food, to the classes, to the live in doctor. Their every want or need was catered to. Not that they wanted or needed much; DeWitt had not been exaggerating about the Actives having the needs of children.

She also had not exaggerated the power the place had. Where the Actives lived and played appeared to be the picture of relaxation and serenity everything else thrummed with the activity of a secret, illegal, business operation. There was enough weaponry to hold the House if under attack, and even some for after that, enough personnel running about and DeWitt was even texting clients while giving him the tour. “Last minute alterations,” she explained each time. “There’s always something with some of the shyer ones.”

The handlers he was introduced to were all either ex military or ex police. There was one single ex-convict but he was a handler because he was particularly well suited to handle his Active, who was serving his prison sentence as a Doll instead of in a conventional prison. The handlers all suffered background checks as extensive and as invasive as secret service agents did. They also were assigned their Actives very carefully and any evidence or hint of inappropriate behaviour resulted in immediate, harsh action. The Attic is a term he has already heard tossed around a bit and he has every reason to believe it is as terrible as the staff seems to believe it is. 

Charlie is not to be seen throughout this tour. Sherlock suspects that they’re moving him around so he does not see him one second before DeWitt thinks he has to. There is also the possibility that Sherlock has walked by him already but he refuses to consider the idea that he would miss him even if it made sense. Charlie was not John after all and no one could summon his attention like John.

Sherlock does meet Alice Jenkins, Charlie’s first handler who has since been assigned to another Active due to showing signs of attraction toward him. No one tells this to him of course but it is written all over her face. As well as in the fact that the Active that is now her charge is female, tall, dark haired and dark eyed. Charlie’s most recent handler was recently taken ill, terminally ill, and had resigned. DeWitt smiles that he’d arrived just in time and Sherlock reminds her that he did not come for her convenience.

That makes her flinch and come as close to screaming at him as he has made her yet. It is a small victory but he will revel in it as best he can. The revelry is brief as he realises that they are headed to what has to be where the ‘imprinting’ happens. It is the only location on the tour he has not yet seen. In the room is a simple chair similar to a dentist’s set up to lower the head of the person sitting in it into a ring that Sherlock can’t help but find threatening. On the other hand there are a myriad of computers and medical equipment and monitors that he is itching to get his hands on. Aside from DeWitt not wanting him to take a peek just yet there is another staff member here, one he has a feeling he is going to be made to deal with fairly frequently.

“Sherlock Holmes, this is our programmer; Topher Brink.”

Topher Brink is about John’s height and has a dishwater colour hair similar to his friend’s but without the military precision hair cut. Everyone else at this establishment is dressed very well, business casual at the very lowest, but Topher is wearing a pair of jeans coupled with a grey t-shirt and open buttoned shirt. Appearance is never a be all or end all in Sherlock’s deductions and even as he takes in Brink’s slightly disheveled appearance he knows he is looking at the real brains behind the operation. Brink either created this system or improved it and it his domain before it is DeWitt’s.

Topher smiles brightly and extends his hand. “Glad to meet you, Mr. Holmes, and glad you’re part of the team.” Honest relief there. Topher must know about John’s contract, but DeWitt does not appear to be the type to expound on confidential data with the programmer. This leads to one other source. Sherlock vows to get him alone later. For now he listens with genuine interest as Topher takes him around the lab and shows him everything with the pride only one scientist can show to another. At some point DeWitt has left them to their own devices but Sherlock barely notices. 

The science of the thing is really quite extraordinary. Sherlock gives him some personality specifications and Topher creates a man with precisely those qualities right down to genetic predisposition and family upbringing. He was creating people without bodies here, disposable people who may never see the light of day again once their engagement was done with. “We keep aspects and reuse some personalities,” Topher tells him as he stores Sherlock’s creation onto a wedge. “We definitely do not imprint the same active with the same personality twice if we can avoid it. The chance of glitching is just too much.”

“Glitching?”

“When the Actives get flashbacks of their original personalities. It’s usually something small like remembering a certain way to eat pizza or their last birthday or something but it can be a big problem during a mission. They tend not to respond to their handlers if they’re busy trying to figure out why a certain street corner seems familiar.” Topher shrugs, concerned but resigned. “I do what I can to mitigate it but the brain’s a tricky thing and I’ve made the system better but not perfect.” He rolls his eyes. 

Sherlock fiercely controls the spark of hope in him. Just because Charlie may suddenly find himself craving Earl Grey or flashback to Afghanistan does not mean that Charlie is John. John is on one of the wedges like the one Topher is putting away now. He thinks about asking which one is John’s but has a feeling that it isn’t kept with the others, not now that he is here anyway.

“You know,” Topher starts. “I got to talk to John a bit, before I...” he gestured at the chair between them. “He wanted –“ Topher jumps a foot in the air and clutches his chest. “Would you stop doing that! You always do that! Are you part ninja or something?” 

“They said I had a treatment.”

Sherlock tenses at the familiar voice. He had prepared himself for hearing just the sound of the voice and not the person but hearing John - _Charlie. This is Charlie not John and do remember it!_ – sounding so vacant and childlike was a horror unlike any other. Despite this horror his need to see his friend, or rather this person who resembled his friend, overpowers him and he turns.

The eyes, Sherlock thinks, are worse than the voice. Sherlock can deduce a great deal from the eyes and there is nothing in Charlie’s eyes to suggest anything about them and there is nothing of John staring back at him. He pulls back his focus to take in the man that was once John Watson. He appears healthy and unharmed and seems to have just come from the in house masseuse. He’s wearing a comfortable grey t-shirt, loose fitting black trousers and looks completely relaxed. Relaxed, carefree, and content. Sherlock is almost envious but the wrongness and the hurt is thrumming through him too hard and fast for him to notice all that much. He clenches his hands into fists to keep from grabbing Charlie’s shoulders and shaking him until John was standing there instead.

Topher waves them closer together. “Charlie, this is Sherlock. Sherlock, this is Charlie.”

The name means nothing to Charlie but he smiles brightly and says hello. Sherlock manages to say hello back. Charlie appears confused and is about to ask him something but Topher ushers him into the chair. “Sherlock’s going to be your new handler.” Charlie’s only response is an obedient “okay” and Sherlock watches the chair recline until Charlie is laying down. He doesn’t even react when he notices his head is surrounded by the ring.

Topher passes Sherlock a piece of paper. “Bonding spell,” he explains with a wink. “Stick to the words. Once you two do that, I push some buttons, and then he’ll trust you no matter what imprint we put in him. He’ll even trust you when he’s like this.” Sherlock scans the quick script and commits it to memory, handing it back to Topher dismissively. His stomach churns at the idea of having this man programmed to trust him when before it had been given willingly. 

“Also,” Topher continues, “physical contact helps. So touch his shoulder or hold his hand or something. You don’t want him questioning you when you’re in the field let me tell you.”

Touch was a strange thing in his and John’s relationship. They had no sense of personal space; they grabbed and pulled and yanked each other at will but touching without any sort of immediate goal in mind was not something they did without thought. Clasps on the shoulder were barely frequent on either end and hand holding is something that Sherlock has only done once: while John was unconscious in hospital. They were free with each other but there were still some boundaries.

He decides to take Charlie’s hand here. Charlie reflexively grips back. That grip tightens as the circle around Charlie’s head illuminates with purple light and his body tenses with a brief stab of pain. The pain is gone faster than it came, though, and soon Charlie is looking at him as if he is the most important thing in his universe.

Topher nudges him with his foot.

Sherlock clears his throat and does his best to keep his eyes locked with Charlie’s. “Everything is going to be alright.”

“Now that you’re here.” Charlie’s fingers shift until he’s managed to wrap his hand around Sherlock’s wrist without their hands ever having separated. Two fingers press into his wrist. Sherlock does his best not to gasp or otherwise react to the fact that Charlie – _John!_ – is taking his pulse. The last time he and John had touched was when John had pushed his way through the clutch of people in front of St. Bart’s and tried to find a pulse on his supposed bloody corpse.

It’s a reflex, he tells himself. Topher’s programmed all of them to do this and they’re all programmed to react to these words. It’s just the programming it’s not John. But there’s something there in Charlie’s trusting eyes. A disbelief and a relief that cannot be standard issue for this ritual.

Topher clears his throat. Sherlock forces the next, and final, line of script out. “Do you trust me?”

Charlie’s index and middle fingers curl around Sherlock’s wrist with the others. The move is without a doubt a caress. “With my life,” the voice is a reverent whisper, the reaffirmation of a believer who once doubted. 

John’s hand squeezes his tight and Sherlock squeezes back and refuses to let him go. He can’t tell if the squeeze is a greeting or a farewell and needs John to stay with him for one more second but the purple light is shut off, Topher announces the ritual a success, and it is Charlie that rises up with the chair. Sherlock lets go of his hand. 

“Shall I go now?” Charlie asks Topher with his eyes still on Sherlock.

“If you like.” When Charlie gets up and walks out Topher indicates that he should follow. “You haven’t seen him in a long time. Go bond.”

“That isn’t John,” Sherlock growls. 

“That’s kinda the point,” Topher reminds him. “If you want him to be John again, by that I mean if you want him to go with you when you walk up to him and tell him that he needs treatment when he’s imprinted with somebody who doesn’t know you or me from a hole in the wall, you need to go hang out. It’s been how long you guys? A year and half, right?” He goes on despite Sherlock’s lack of response. “You’re a different person now, I’m sure. He’s just a little more different. Go reacquaint. I can show you some other stuff later.”

It takes twenty minutes of battle before Topher gets Sherlock out of the room. The last electrical shock from the keyboard was decidedly against the rules, he decides. If one could call that display of “who can hotwire a computer to do the most damage the fastest” to have anything resembling rules that was. He shall have to be more ruthless next time – Topher Brink clearly had an advantage on him.

An advantage that may be the fact that he got to speak to John and John must have spoken of him. What did they talk about? What did a man who was about to have his mind erased say to a man who was about to do it? That question would have to wait since he did admit that he had the curiosity to see how much of that ‘ritual’ had worked on Charlie and how much of John remained.

He spies Charlie walking toward an art class. When Sherlock reaches him he has selected pastels and is in the process of colouring the entire sheet of paper grey. “Hello, Charlie.” He sits down.

“Good day.” Charlie looks up and smiles at him but continues furiously drawing the paper grey.

“What are you drawing?”

“Grey.”

“I can see that,” Sherlock mumbles. “Just the colour grey or are you planning on doing something with it?”

“Just the pavement will be grey; the rest will be black and red.” Charlie puts the grey pastel down and reaches for a black one. A rudimentary stick man is drawn and then Charlie reaches for the red. The red surrounds the stick figure, especially around the stick man’s head, and Charlie looks back at his work and smiles triumphantly. Whatever is in his head has translated precisely on to paper. 

Sherlock swallows. “What happened to the man?” he asks.

Charlie doesn’t hesitate. “He fell.” The two words are whispered and distant and Charlie’s face contorts as he tries to turn an image of blood and pain into a memory. Sherlock doesn’t know and doesn’t care if this is happening only because of the bonding or because Charlie is remembering on his own but he would be a fool not to press his advantage. 

“Molly gave me some blood bags,” he explains. “I burst them on the pavement before I rolled off the lorry. Do you remember the lorry, John?”

“Who’s John?” It is an honest question and it makes Sherlock want to hit him.

“You are,” Sherlock insists. He takes Charlie’s wrists and squeezes them tight. He doesn’t look at him. “You’re John Watson and I’m Sherlock Holmes. We live in London, we solve crimes together, and I was never really dead, John. I’m back now and we can go back home now. It’s all over.”

For a minute it looks like Charlie is actually considering it but whatever recognition or insight he’d had upstairs isn’t here now. The eyes are vacant and Sherlock can almost hear the crackle of missed connections in his brain. The picture means nothing to him. In fact whatever Charlie did remember to make him the picture is gone now; he looks slightly confused at what he’s drawn. “I think I’ll go for a swim now.”

Sherlock deflates and nods him away. Charlie stands but hovers by him expectantly. “Come with me?”

“Why?”

“Because I like you.”

“You’re programmed to like me.”

“What?”

“Just go on. I’d like to be alone right now.” He folds his arms on the table and rests his chin on top.

Charlie does not move. He stands by Sherlock and when he does not move he sits down, flips his paper over and starts drawing again. This time he’s grabbed the pencils and he’s sketching. “I thought you wanted to go swimming,” Sherlock near snaps.

“Don’t want to now.”

“You’ve swam without me plenty of times, surely you can manage it now.” He hates Charlie, he decides. He hates Charlie for not being John and he hates John for deciding this was a good idea and forcing him to make his amends like this. He knows Charlie is looking at him in shock and sadness but he can’t bear to look up. Staring at his chest is easier than his face. After a moment Charlie wanders off and Sherlock buries his face into the table. This is only the first day and it is only going to get worse from here.

When he finally rises from his chair he sees Charlie’s sketch. It’s very crude but it looks very much like a headstone. 

Maybe he’d ask Mycroft to take his headstone away, put John’s name on it, and send it back to him to prop up in his hotel room. Maybe that would make the message stick.


	5. Part Five

Charlie’s last imprint had been a long term one as a bodyguard for a pop singer. Long term engagements required a lot of extra monitoring and extra treatments thus the Active involved received a significant break after the fact. Charlie had been the bodyguard for six months and had been without an engagement for two weeks already when Sherlock had arrived, and Sherlock knows that DeWitt is giving him more time considering everything. It is uncharacteristically generous of her; he knows it well enough without Topher pointedly reminding him, thank you very much. Soon enough she is going to send them out no matter how uncomfortable Sherlock is.

Sherlock has spent Charlie’s rest period finding as many things to do as possible that don’t involve Charlie. He spends an hour with him now and then, usually watching him swim lengths where he doesn’t actually have to speak to him, but he does not allow himself any more. Prison visits typically do not last longer than an hour and if John had meant this as a prison sentence then Sherlock will play the part the best he knows how. For the past two weeks he has immersed himself in the technology, Topher has loudly objected to his presence as his shadow whenever DeWitt or the Chief of Security (Langton, he thinks) are within earshot but he can tell Topher enjoys his presence. Or at least he enjoys someone that can keep up with him – the assistant, Ivy, seems to have other work to be done and has embraced Sherlock’s presence as an excuse for her to keep as far away from Topher as possible.

Topher is a rather impossible man. He is manic, protective, slightly paranoid, and all around insane. Somewhere, the John that haunts his mind palace is asking in a barely restrained deadpan where he’s seen this sort of behaviour before. If it had amazed him when he got here two weeks ago it absolutely dazzled him now –and he has now seen an Active released from their contract and an Active beginning their contract.

He tries not to think about the one he saw released; the day when Charlie becomes John is too far away to even contemplate. The beginning of a contract though, watching a depressed accountant named Lisa become an Active codenamed Foxtrot (Topher claimed it was because of her red hair and that it was either Foxtrot or Mike but Sherlock knows better), is a painful process because no matter how many times he reminds himself that it wasn’t John he was watching get wiped away, not John that was painfully having every part of their body mapped and tested, he couldn’t see anyone else. John had been alone and had knowingly conceded to having his mind erased while Sherlock had been gallivanting across Eastern Europe somewhere.

Sherlock cynically concedes to the idea that what was one more betrayal or feeling of guilt to add to what was already there.

“He’s going to start thinking you don’t like him if you’re not careful.”

Sherlock already has this game of chess won but Topher insists on seeing it through. He’s experimenting on him the same way that Sherlock knows he would so he supposes he can’t fault him for it. Besides, it seems that Topher is managing to change his strategy and adapt his moves enough to make this defeat interesting and not swift enough to be dull. 

“Um... Sherlock? That’s not good. It’s really, really not good.”

“He’s programmed to trust me not to like me or care whether I like him or not.” He takes Topher’s bishop. “Check.” He revises his opinion on the swiftness of this defeat.

“Yes I’ve programmed him to trust you but I didn’t program him to like you. He chose to like you. Though people can trust each other and hate each other and work just fine so maybe you don’t need to listen to me.” Topher takes his rook, drags it across the board and captures Sherlock’s rook. “Right back at you.”

Sherlock nudges his pawn into position. “Mate.” All too easy after all. Topher’s mouth hangs open at the board and Sherlock takes this opportunity to flee. He feels like he’s being watched so stops a few metres away from Topher to glare back at him, ready meet whatever idiocy Topher has ready for him. Topher is standing with his arms folded across his chest and his face decorated with an expression of “I told you so” as he jerks his head below.

Sherlock turns on reflex and finds Charlie standing by the entrance to the spa staring up at him. The other Actives pass him and greet him but he does not respond to them. The expression is a perfect study in confusion – _What have I done? Am I not my best?_ He’s seen a shadow of that look on John’s face in the moments when he raves at him for whatever reason but it is quickly replaced by one of annoyance and resignation because this is what Sherlock Holmes does when he’s bored or idle. Or if a case isn’t going well. Or is just in a foul mood.

Charlie does not know him a part of him reminds him harshly. Charlie doesn’t understand what’s going on one way or the other. He doesn’t understand why Sherlock doesn’t like him because there’s nothing for Charlie to remember.

“He warned me you were slow on the uptake but seriously?” Topher has appeared at his elbow and leans over the balustrade. “Wave to him or something. Go talk to him. Count his laps for him or something. “

Sherlock’s hand is moving to wave at him when he hears the approach of Adelle DeWitt. “Mr. Holmes, Charlie’s been off duty long enough.” She hands him a dossier and gives another to Topher. “Have him ready by 1600.” 

Topher shakes his head at Sherlock as she strides away. “Now there goes someone who does not like you right now.”

“She doesn’t have to like me.”

Topher shrugs as he thumbs through his copy of the dossier. “This shouldn’t take long. Go hang out with him for an hour and come back.” Sherlock tries to offer his help with constructing the imprint but Topher has already vanished into his head and heads off to his domain. Sherlock sniffs irritably.

It doesn’t take long to find Charlie swimming laps. “Forty – three,” he reports after Charlie is out and towelling himself off. “You were ten seconds faster than last time. Well done.”

“I try to be my best.” It’s almost a confession. Sherlock tries to smile at him; he doesn’t think it works.

“Get showered and dressed,” he orders. “I’ll wait for you outside. It’s time for a treatment.”

“I like my treatments.”

He thinks of some of the imprinting he’s witnessed over the past two weeks and wonders if Charlie is the type of Active who actually, deep down in their brain matter, enjoys the feeling of becoming someone else or whether he’s one of the ones who is screaming and fighting against the transformation. 

It wouldn’t be the first time he’s observed John for a reaction, he hopes it won’t be the last, but this is not one that he would ever have devised for his friend. Even if he had asked for it.

===================================================================================== 

Adelle DeWitt clearly picked this engagement for Charlie on purpose. As Charlie gets settled in the chair Sherlock reads the dossier again. Client requested a man to break into a jewellery store and steal the contents of the owner’s safe for him. He already has the robbery planned; he just can’t execute it himself because of a recent fall and has too much invested to have just anyone carry it out.

He wants an experienced man. A man who will blindly follow orders, a man who was all action and no thought and will carry through the contract to the end even if it results in his own death. The theft is clearly an act of revenge then. What Topher is mixing up is a man of that temperament who would still do another man’s dirty work and take the fall for him. “I love a challenge,” Topher crows as he ushers Charlie into the seat. “A hardened bad ass who won’t take crap from anyone but will still do this for someone that he doesn’t know. A lot harder than you think.”

It’s not hard to omit certain parts of a personality or cross others together, but he doesn’t say anything as Topher continues to preen as he gets Charlie settled. “You ready, Charlie?” He smiles at the eager nod. “Sherlock, what about you?”

He takes another look at the work order, prepares himself for what is about to happen, and then nods his head. In a minute Charlie will be an ex convict named Roy Kaplan and Sherlock will be his transportation for the night. He is not permitted to enter the building with him – that was handler protocol unless there was an emergency but Topher has designed the imprint to keep him out. He will drive him to the drop off location and then back to the House. Simple and it required no meaningful interaction between him and Charlie. That of course is the point.

The transformation of Charlie into Roy is terrifying as much as it is fascinating. Charlie arches in the chair and gasps with the press of a button and Sherlock watches as Charlie’s vacant eyes fill with the personality of a truly soulless man. He doesn’t even look to see whether John is one of the secret enjoyers or one of the secret screamers. He had thought that looking into John’s eyes and seeing nothing and no one looking back at him had been awful. Looking into John’s eyes and seeing someone else is so much worse. Watching John sit up differently, move differently, and make a snide comment about having an underwear model as a getaway driver with not a single hint of humour was so much worse.

“Well move it then!” Roy snaps as he heads out the door. “We don’t have all day!”

Sherlock follows.

=====================================================================================

Roy Kaplain may not exist but Sherlock can deduce him just fine. Apparently a Doll can fool even him but he knows John and getting information from the same body that was different from before was making his head hurt. While Roy was getting attired into something more appropriate Sherlock had slipped off to get something for that and for the persistent lurching of his stomach. The last thing he needed to do was throw up all over everything. Roy would be far from sympathetic.

The character of Roy is a deeply cynical man. He is in this line of work because he happens to be good at it and because his original plans for himself have fallen through. Ex-military, it was written all over him and Topher had certainly kept John’s stride in the imprint. Or else there was something coming through here but Sherlock has seen no sign that Roy is experiencing flashbacks or déjà vu. 

John had found his close examination of him unsettling when they first met. Everyone did but unlike everyone else didn’t say anything. Roy on, the other hand, snaps at him every time he looks at him too closely. While they’re driving, Sherlock prides himself on not veering to the left considering the situation, he tries to go about talking and getting involved another way when Roy is going over the outline for the evening. Every suggestion is harshly dismissed even if they are the better ones.

“This is how he wants it done,” Roy lectures. “This is how I’ve been told to do it and this how I am going to do it. I’m not changing the plan because you think it’s crap. It may be a shit plan but it’s a shit plan that I’m going to work with.”

“Even if it means getting arrested?”

Roy shrugs. “Even then. It’s what I’m paid to do.”

“And if you get killed?”

Roy grabs the wheel of the car and pulls them over. Cars swerve to avoid them and the busy Los Angeles traffic blasts its displeasure. “Look,” Roy commands. “You’re not being paid to care about what happens to me. I don’t want your help, I would rather drive myself but I am being paid to be chauffeured about so I won’t kick you out onto the street and drive off. You will shut your mouth and do what you’re paid to do, which is drive if you’ve forgotten, or I will rip out your vocal cords. Understand?”

John’s voice has only sounded close to this once: when he was informing the Golem to let him go or he’d kill him. That doesn’t even touch the menacing fury, of barely restrained evil, in the words and the intonation. Sherlock doesn’t know what to say so Roy grabs Sherlock’s throat, squeezes tight enough that Sherlock’s vision blurs, and asks if he understands again. Sherlock somehow manages to nod and Roy orders him to drive. 

They arrive at their destination with no further conversation or incidents. “Be back here in two hours,” Roy instructs. “If I don’t come out five minutes from when you get here you get out.” The implication that that means he’s been captured or killed doesn’t even have time to hang in the air as he shoves a gun into his waistband and Sherlock hits the gas and drives off into the night. 

He spends the next two hours parked at an empty beach. It’s not quite dark yet and the water’s edge and swaying palm trees almost looks inviting. He gets out of the car and perches on roof with his Dollhouse issued mobile in his hand. A set of happy and healthy vitals beep at him and he tries to keep that at the front of his mind.

Charlie was not John and Roy was neither Charlie nor John but the comparison could not help but be made. He could not help but see shades of potential in what Roy was. What if John had been introduced to someone like Moriarty when he’d returned from Afghanistan? What if John had just deteriorated after his final tour into someone like this? What if Sherlock had died for real and John had found himself in this sort of situation because it was what his skill set was? There were not many jobs for a duel function healer and killer.

This particular personality had been constructed on purpose. Topher didn’t care enough to recognize it but DeWitt had known for certain that Sherlock would. Eventually. It angers him as much as it impresses him, the shades of John lurking in there without either Charlie or Roy being aware of it. Topher in some ways knows John better than he does apparently. He half expects his mobile to ring and for the caller ID to read ‘Adelle DeWitt” but nothing happens. He remains as motionless as a statue on top of the car until it’s time to get back to the rendezvous point. He pulls up, puts the car in park, unlocks the door and waits.

At three and a half minutes past the meeting time Sherlock opens the passenger side door. At five minutes he shuts said door and exits the vehicle. He wasn’t driving off without Roy, not while his body belonged to someone else.

He finds Roy locked on the other side of a side entrance. By some miracle the security system has not been tripped, he thanks Topher for not cocking up Roy’s skill set in that regard, but the small window is shatterproof and it seems that Roy Kaplain does not have John Watson’s aptitude for lock picking. If John had been on the other side of that door there would be no issue; there were at least three items on his person that could be adapted to lock picking. Sherlock takes out one of said three items from his own pocket and opens the door. 

Roy bolts out the door like a thief in the night, clichéd and obvious but true, and throws himself into the car. Sherlock speeds off and both let out a sigh of relief when no police appear at their backs. Roy had done the job beautifully, the client would be happy, and it was a job well done.

Not according to Roy apparently. “I told you to drive off if I didn’t come right away!” 

Sherlock does not even bother dignifying Roy with retaliation. It doesn’t matter if he tells that him that he couldn’t in good conscience leave him behind (for the real reason or a made up one) or if he tells him that he is in fact getting paid more if he returns with the jewels. Roy is not programmed to understand any of it. He wonders, vaguely, if this is how people who were not John thought of him sometimes. 

Roy drops off the jewels at the drop off point without incident and then it’s back to the Dollhouse. He cheerfully mentions a treatment to Roy who manages to calm down a little bit. “That’s what I fucking need, a treatment. That’ll fix things up. Maybe you should sign up too.”

Sherlock bites his tongue and is very glad to see him taken down the Actives only lift. 

“Did you have fun tonight?” Boyd Langton, Head of Security, asks. He chuckles at Sherlock’s huff. “Maybe if you play nice with Charlie you’ll get a better assignment.” Sherlock allows him to leave without a response as well.

He wants to go straight home right then and there. Sod the post-engagement paperwork he’s supposed to complete, but he follows Roy in to the House on the pretense of turning in his gun. Instead of going there right away he heads up to the lab. Charlie is just leaving – and he is Charlie again now – and Sherlock cannot help the smile that crosses his face when he sees him. Roy is gone and this vapid man here remains. A vapid man that can be saved. 

Charlie is confused when he sees him, Sherlock ignores the tug at his heartstrings when he remembers that Charlie thinks that he doesn’t like him, but smiles brightly at him back eventually. “Hello, Sherlock.”

The way Charlie says his name, with a lighter ‘er’ than he has since Sherlock has known him, causes Sherlock’s smile to fall. “How was your treatment?” he asks.

“I fell asleep.”

“That’s not unusual.”

“I’m still tired though.”

“It is late,” Sherlock agrees. “You should go to bed.”

Charlie nods, says good night and keeps walking. He stops when he realises Sherlock is following him. “Do you sleep here too?”

Sherlock shakes his head. “No.”

“Do you want to sleep with me tonight?”

Somewhere in his Mind Palace John is lamenting the fact that even him without memories is getting the wrong idea about them. Maybe they should just make it official once everyone’s back to normal. Sherlock ignores that tug as well. “No, Charlie. I just want to make sure you make it to bed alright.”

“Because you look after me.” 

“Yes. Yes I do.”

There’s some sort of understanding there, as much understanding there can be at any rate, and Charlie leads him to the pods where the Dolls sleep. John would not approve of the accommodations since they were far too coffin-like. Sherlock can’t say he approves either, especially as he and Charlie wish each other good night again and Charlie instantly drops off. He looks like a corpse as the door of the pod slides closed above the peaceful face.

There are five pods to a room. Charlie is here along with four other people who might as well be dead. When they come back blinking into the world it will be hailed as a miracle by all who know them. Sherlock bows his head and stands watch at foot of Charlie’s pod for a few minutes and then heads home.

He adds a fourteenth tally for the count on his wall when he arrives and wonders, yet again, how he is going to survive another five hundred and thirty four days. 


	6. Part Six

He makes the ninety second mark on his wall and then drops face first onto the bed. The thing has just stopped shaking with the impact when it starts to shake slightly around his still outstretched hand: his mobile. He angles his head, glares at it until it silences, and shuts his eyes again. He doesn’t know who spread the word about Charlie’s fantastic work as bodyguard for the Governor of Nevada two months ago but it has been nonstop work for them ever since.

The longest engagement has been three weeks as a Texan con man named Jim Franklin, a wonderful caricature that Sherlock is sure Topher had manufactured on purpose to annoy him, but it’s been a quick succession of body guarding, espionage, thefts, fraud, and a few instances of women wanting a purely platonic escort for whatever reason. It has been utterly exhausting. They have had one three day break in that period. He’s surprised that Charlie hasn’t been glitching or crossing personalities with all of the jumping back and forth between being no one and being someone else. How would John’s brain, and John himself, stand up to it all when the contract ended?

He may tolerate Topher Brink, he may even slightly like Topher Brink, but he does not trust Topher Brink. He still cannot fathom why John placed his trust in him, or if he even actually did. The man hasn’t yet caught on that Sherlock has been copying his files, including Charlie’s imprints, and engaging in his own kind of surveillance. This is all Mycroft’s request mostly but also Sherlock’s curiosity. The real issue here is that either Topher is actually blind to what he is doing or else he is fully aware and is allowing it to happen anyway. Why? He begins to wonder.

No, he orders himself as his mobile keeps ringing. You can deal with that question after you’ve had a good night’s sleep. Or good morning’s sleep he amends as he remembers that it is daybreak now. He gets two hours before the mobile on the bed and the telephone on the nightstand start ringing in tandem. This time he picks it up knowing full well that there was only one person who could pull of this trick.

“Ring back tomorrow!” He tries to end the call but it seems that the ‘end’ button has been disabled. That was new.

“You haven’t reported in for over a month, Sherlock,” Mycroft’s distant, disapproving voice reminds him. It’s a comfort to hear something from home though, even if it is his brother. “I was beginning to worry.”

“You saw the both of us three months ago at that conference. I gathered that should have settled your curiosity.”

“If you think I’m meant to be content with hearing nothing from you unless our paths happen to cross while the two of you are on assignment I have to assume you’ve been standing too close to the imprint chair.”

Sherlock has been more than diligent as to forwarding information on the process and technology and precisely what schemes that Topher Brink has simmering away in his mind and reminds Mycroft, somewhat blearily, of that fact. The man is not one to ultimately wish to go as far as he inevitably will but that is the curse of a curious mind. Sherlock is self aware enough to recognize that flaw in himself after all. 

Mycroft is still attempting to speak to him. He sticks out a leg and disconnects the telephone cord from the wall. He then slams the mobile closed and then shoves it under the pillows. He goes back to his slumber. He gets another three hours before Mr. Langton appears at his door. “Coming along?” he asks.

Five hours, he thinks. Good enough for now. 

============================================================================== 

Part of DeWitt’s sending of her chief of security to collect him in the absence of standard telephone communication is only partly to get him appraised on the next engagement. Langton also takes it upon himself to warn Sherlock of what developments Charlie appears to have made during the brief amount of time he has been wandering the House as Charlie since Sherlock had become his handler. He is starting to isolate himself from the rest of the Actives. Grouping, the term the staff uses to describe regular social groups forming, is frowned upon officially though there is one romantic relationship between the Actives that is either being hidden or being tolerated but absolute isolation is not healthy. Humans are at the basest level a social species and it is the House’s responsibility to make sure their basic needs are met.

Charlie in his off hours has mingled normally with the other Actives before. Now he is starting to select seats away from the others on purpose and even moving to an empty table when others join him at meal times or art class. 

Charlie has been imprinted with enough loner types since Sherlock has joined the staff and that is what Langton personally marks it down to. “You can’t have this many engagements and not have something linger,” Langton had explained as they’d entered the House. “I’ll try and talk her in to giving you two a bit of a break. A real one.” 

Sherlock understands, and even accepts, that hypothesis but what he is seeing now as he watches John watch a yoga class instead of actually participating in it makes him smile. This is not Charlie at all, or rather not entirely. This is John looking out at the world with the gaze of a junior observer and of a writer. It’s John’s look and John’s behaviour but it’s Charlie doing it and Charlie doesn’t know why he’s trying to commit what he sees to memory or even what he’s looking for. It’s confusion that is painted across his face but somewhere in the lines of his mouth there is a hint of frustration. Frustration that he should know better and know what he’s doing but he can’t sort it out. It is either a suggestion or a memory but it doesn’t matter to Sherlock. He smiles at it, “Hello, John.”

He’s too far away for Charlie to hear him but he waits until Charlie eventually does look up. He smiles and waves eagerly at him. Sherlock waggles his fingers languidly back and follows Langton into DeWitt’s office when he comes to fetch him.

“Are you encouraging this?” she demands the second his toe has set foot into her domain. “I do not want my Active compromised.”

Sherlock bristles at the implication that John, any part of him, belongs to anyone but himself (or Sherlock) and answers in the negative. He has hoped for a bit of glitching and hoped for bits of John to come through if only to remind him why he remains here but he has not actively found ways to cause it. Not since the disappointment of their first meeting and his subsequent isolation of Charlie. It was better to think of Charlie as Charlie. At least that’s what he tells himself every single time he sees Charlie tense and gasp in that chair and sees John put up a fight in the backs of his and Charlie’s shared eyes. He loses, naturally, every single time but he never gives up. Whether he is that determined or forgets each previous battle doesn’t matter. The fact that that little bit of John that lingers there never gives up is encouraging.

DeWitt glares at him and Sherlock decides the best way to infuriate her is to repeat again, more earnestly, that he is not doing anything. Her eyes narrow and her body tenses in annoyance and from somewhere behind him Sherlock can feel Langton’s amusement.

“We’ll deal with this later,” she promises darkly. “We need an assassin today; or rather our illustrious client needs an assassin today.” She hands the file to Sherlock. “This man has seen his last sunrise.”

‘This man’ was Karl – no surname – a pimp and drug dealer who has been giving the client (a past employee) a hard time in finding legitimate, gainful employment (he pulled her fake ID and her real one and made them invalid). There is also the underlying history of abuse here, rather unspeakable abuse, but DeWitt hasn’t been told that and Sherlock sees no need to inform her. There is also the fact that the man will certainly be dead in six months judging by his skin colour and rapid weight loss but it seems speed was of the essence. This will also be a cleaner death than the one that awaits him. Somewhere, somewhere very deep down, this client still respects him. A little. 

He doesn’t open the folder to actually read the imprint until he’s passing it off to Topher. One detail catches his attention: This imprint is mute. This client is obviously very concerned about making sure this Active won’t talk. The personality specifications are also especially bland. “She might as well have asked me to make a robot for her.” Topher looks at the work order twice and then rings DeWitt to ask if this is actually all he has to do. “I can do so much more than this! I’m better this and I can give her more than this.”

Topher deflates at the response but does as he’s told. He waves Sherlock over and has him take a look at the brain scans. “Ta da! As close to a machine as I can get without inventing the android.” Topher is being mostly glib but Sherlock has to agree sentiment. It’s not that this imprint is stupid or deficient in anything but he has no imagination. Even idiots have some measure of imagination. He’d rather have Anderson at his back tonight than this person that Charlie is about to become. He doesn’t even bother trying remembering the name that Topher has chosen. 

When Charlie appears even Charlie looks confused without having any real reason for being so. “Is the treatment different?”

“Different dose,” Topher answers. “Just want to try something new.”

Charlie accepts this with a disturbing amount of stride and settles in to the chair. “Will this be the last one for awhile?”

Topher is taken aback. Understandable since never has there been an Active that has complained so openly of fatigue. “Um...well...ahhh...” his babbling is atrocious so Sherlock speaks up. 

“Yes. You won’t need another for some time after this.” He’ll hold true to that promise no matter what he has to do to keep it. To cement it in the architecture he adds in “do you trust me?” at the end. Sherlock doesn’t realise he’s stepped forward to take Charlie’s hand as Charlie answers, as he is programmed to do, that he trusts Sherlock with his life. It’s a rote response for the both of them in this case, the instant recognition and connection during the bonding has never repeated itself in the few times Sherlock has had to use the phrase in the field.

The imprint is done quickly and Charlie – now Simon, Sherlock’s brain oh so helpfully reminds him – slowly rises from the chair. He takes in the room, and those in it, thoroughly and then raises an expectant eyebrow at Sherlock. He leads Simon on to the armory, allows him to select his own weapon, and lays out the precise work involved in tonight’s job. Sherlock, as has become typical over the past few weeks, is playing the part of a facilitator or broker or actual handler. In Simon’s mind Sherlock is the one who gets his jobs and the one who audits them. He trusts Sherlock to exercise good judgement and he trusts him to get him home safe and paid at job’s end.

It’s painfully familiar except for the fact that Sherlock doesn’t think that John ever trusted him to exercise good judgement. If he did he probably would have nothing to do with him and they wouldn’t be here right now. It’s a strange burden, especially so considering the circumstances. 

In this imprint Simon does the driving so Sherlock does his best to hash out the perfect murder in the meantime. They’ve been given everything and, as he’s been programmed, Simon lacks the imagination to do anything other than stand in a specific spot, aim, and pull the trigger. 

A handler’s job is to not get directly involved in the engagement but in this instance Sherlock believes there is no alternative but to. DeWitt has to understand that but if she doesn’t she’ll suspend him for a few weeks and that in turn will suspend Charlie from duty. That was one way to secure a break. 

Simon pulls over a few blocks away from the flat where Karl will be returning tonight to pick up his latest shipment and listens intently as Sherlock lays out the plan. Outside the sun was shining and life went on but inside this fourteen year old car (green Plymouth Breeze, long since discontinued) silence reigned supreme as final details were ironed out and meeting times arranged. With a final nod of understanding the car is parked and they both leave in opposite directions. Sherlock makes sure his mobile is set on alert in case something goes wrong and gets into the building. Simon will be in the opposite one, ready to take out Karl once Sherlock has drawn him to the window. He hasn’t quite sorted how he is going to do that yet but he’s sure that it is going to be brilliant.

Well, he thinks three hours later as he’s being punched into submission by Karl when he finds Sherlock in the process of flushing a significant shipment of cocaine down the toilet. Normally he can hold his own well enough in a fight but Karl certainly has him on size and brute force. The one good shot to his head, and the ones that have followed, have kept him disoriented enough to lose this badly. 

Shoot him anytime, he thinks. Anytime would be a great time, John.

The shot comes six minutes later than he expects and it’s because Simon has come over from the other building into the doorway of the flat. Sherlock manages to roll away before Karl’s body falls on him and Simon has him by the wrist, on his feet, and running before Sherlock can get a good look at anything clean up wise. “DeWitt is not going to be happy,” he mutters to himself. What he really should be worried about is Langton and his security detail having to clean up. Those men do not appreciate a mess.

He’s thrown in the car and Simon is speeding off into the approaching night. He’s chewing his lip furiously, no doubt wishing he could say something appropriately scathing. He’s managing to keep his eyes on the road and is heading back the House via the most roundabout way possible. He is oblivious to Sherlock’s eyes on him.

This whole situation is strikingly similar to their first case together. This time, however, the gunman ran from the building over to deliver the shot instead of firing from the safe distance of the other building. Was that a difference between John and Simon, the time they had known each other (John had known him for one day and Simon is programmed to have known him for a year), or was it a blend?

“I’m alright.”

The face thrown his way is John’s patented ‘I’ll be the judge of that face’ and it shuts Sherlock up until they’re home free. Simon mouths the word ‘doctor’ to him as he goes into the Active lift and heads off for his treatment.

Sherlock does not remember telling him about needing a treatment. 

=====================================================================================

Dr. Saunders is a nice enough woman. Overly concerned with the health of the Actives – she wants to see if Charlie is okay before she sees to him and it takes a near shouting match to get a bandage out of the woman. “Charlie is fine,” he snaps. “He ended up saving me.”

“Some handler you are then.”

Sherlock grumbles at her as she starts to wrap his hand. Both jump when Charlie wanders in. “Are you okay?” he asks, a hair’s breadth from demanding. 

Sherlock nods. “I’m fine, Charlie.”

The ‘I’ll be the judge of that’ look glares up at him again. He strides forward, strides instead of shuffles, and looks at Dr. Saunders expectantly. “Let me.” It’s not a request.

Sherlock and her look at each other and, in wordless agreement, she unwraps what little she has done and steps aside to make way for Charlie. Charlie does not hesitate. He tosses the old bandage away and deftly grabs a new one. Before he opens the gauze he snaps on some gloves and gently probes the hand, taking note of what hurts and ascertaining that nothing is broken.

No one speaks during this examination, and an examination is what it is. It could be mimicry, it could very easily be mimicry, but Sherlock knows this touch. He’s watched John treat enough people and he’s been one of them enough times to know what is going on. Charlie has finished wrapping his hand and has moved on to affixing a butterfly bandage to the cut on his right temple when Sherlock tries his luck. “Thank you, John.”

Charlie starts but his fingers keep going. He looks at Sherlock intently as if he’s recognizing the familiarity of this scene. He takes off the gloves – one off, the last gloved hand fists the discarded one as it too is peeled off – and then runs a cautious bare index finger down Sherlock’s face from hairline to chin. “Need to be more careful,” he half-lectures, half-recites. The bundle of used gloves drops to the floor and is forgotton.

“That’s what you’re here for.” Sherlock remembers this conversation. It had taken place the last time he’d left John behind on a case before the Moriarty trial. 

“Friends protect people.” There’s no anger in the words this time but Sherlock feels no relief. It’s not forgiveness until John himself gives it. He stands and is about to thank Charlie when his hand shoots out to grab his wrist again. They stare at each other, neither sure of exactly what is trying to accomplish. John should never look this lost. John has never looked this lost. Even when Sherlock had seen John at the gravesite before he had left England John had not looked like this. He had known who he was then and he had known what he lost and why he hurt. This is needless suffering in front of him now and for the first time Sherlock actually is distressed by it.

“Keep your eyes fixed on me.” Charlie’s voice is the farthest away it has ever been. He keeps a tight grip on Sherlock’s wrist and traces a finger over a new scar. Sherlock had got that in a knife fight with one of Gunman number two’s cronies. “I did, didn’t I?”

Sherlock nods. “I’m sorry but I had to keep you safe.” Sherlock prides himself on keeping his voice steady. He kicks himself when he realises that was the wrong thing to say or at least the wrong syntax. Charlie’s face becomes blank again and he happily announces that that is because Sherlock takes care of him. Sherlock’s voice does waver when he answers yes.

“Charlie.” DeWitt’s voice captures Charlie’s attention as he opens his mouth to ask if Sherlock is alright. “Would you like a massage?”

“That would be relaxing.” Charlie mindlessly wanders off and leaves Sherlock alone with Saunders and DeWitt. 

“Go home,” DeWitt orders. “You have two weeks and I don’t want to see you in the House until then. We’ll see if I allow you to continue as Charlie’s handler after that.”

“You have a contract,” Sherlock reminds her. “With myself and with John.”

“I am well aware of that but the safety and well being of my Actives is paramount to me. I don’t think it is healthy for you to be around Charlie while he remains here.”

“I was under the impression that Mr. Brink wiped your clients clean before they become your Actives,” Sherlock argues. “That’s hardly my fault if he’s remembering.”

“He cannot be remembering!” DeWitt snaps. “It is impossible. They come to me looking for release, for a reprieve from reality and from what haunts them.” She steps closer, close enough that she could reach out and strangle him if she wanted to. Sherlock wonders when precisely Dr. Saunders left the room. “When John Watson came here he was haunted. Haunted by your death and haunted by the idea that you could pull such a trick on him. Until his contract is up it is my job to keep him safe from his old life as much as it is my job to make my clients happy. Do I make myself clear?”

Sherlock does not grace her with a reply as he leaves the room. He heads straight to Topher’s lab and locks the door. 

“Well hello, Sherlock!” Topher all but squeaks with forced cheerfulness. “Of course I’m happy to entertain even though it’s dinner break and I’m starving. I’ve been running diagnostics all day and I-.”

Sherlock sits in the chair. “Do it to me.”

Topher blinks once. He stares for two seconds and then blinks again. “Sorry I think you just spoke crazy there. Sounds like you asked me to turn you into a Doll.”

“You heard correctly.” He grips the arm rests. “Charlie and I are off rotation. I want you to do precisely what you did to John to me and then wake me up in two weeks.” 

“I didn’t do anything different – “

“Spare me your lies!” Sherlock interrupts harshly as he hardwires the chair to recline. “You and him spoke before you did it. DeWitt doesn’t know about it and I don’t plan to tell her anything. You didn’t take all of him out. You did something. You did something to make him trust you.” 

“What makes you – “ “John Watson has never trusted anyone in his life except for me.” Sherlock sighs. “Or at least he did once. I want to know what makes a man with trust issues trust you with his very existence. I want to know for sure whether he is trapped in there or whether there really are some aspects of a person that you cannot erase.” He shuts his eyes. “No contracts, no engagements, obviously, and I would appreciate this being between you and me. Possibly Langton as well since that may be unavoidable.”

Topher attempts to waste his time by asking if he is sure. “Just do it!” he orders. “Before I change my mind.” 

‘Forgive me, John’ is the last thing Sherlock Holmes thinks. The last thing he feels is the rather unique feeling of his life and memory and sense of self vanishing into a black hole of pain and peace.


	7. Part Seven

_Topher is not involved in recruitment. There’s no reason for him to be. He functions as a part of the machine that is the House. He wipes, he imprints, and he restores when the time comes. He doesn’t settle the paper work and he doesn’t make the deals._

_He thinks John Watson has to have done somebody a really, really big favour when he requests an unsupervised meeting with him, pre-wiping, to discuss terms and DeWitt agrees without hesitation. She doesn’t even order Topher to report the meeting back to her or install any extra surveillance, in fact she tells him to turn off the camera because Watson had asked for it._

_So, yeah, really big favour. Massive. It’s Langton that tells him that Watson helped solve the Moriarty Issue and that explains everything and then some. Topher only knows as much as DeWitt has told him on the MI and that has been more out of frustration than actual willingness to divulge anything. Anyway, it’s obvious that John Watson is best to be treated as some high end client instead of a desperate, or blackmailed, person looking to get away from it all._

_Meeting John Watson shows him that while he is different from the typical future Active, or at least as he understands them, he is the same in some ways. He’s a man in grief who is looking for a way to get away from it all as well as a man looking to protect something. Topher wonders if he faked his own death if anyone would care enough to even suspect that something wasn’t quite right. He asks John what he is actually doing here._

_“How do you mean?”_

_“Well, now that you at least suspect that he’s out there somewhere wouldn’t it just make more sense to go find him? Or wait until he comes back?”_

_“Why would he come back?”_

_“Last time I checked if friends leap off buildings to protect other friends they’re going to come back to said friends as soon as they can. Unless he’s trying to start a new life in Bermuda or something.”_

_John actually ponders that for a moment. “I’d never find him,” he rules. “ I wouldn’t know where to start and if he doesn’t want me or anyone else to find him he won’t be found. As for the waiting suggestion...I don’t think I have the stomach for that.”_

_“And by stomach you mean mental capacity, I think.”_

_John shrugs. “Your words not mine.” He sighs, “It’s safer this way, I think. I could be wrong, you know. I probably am I’m wrong but...”_

_Topher has done his research on Sherlock Holmes in the few minutes he had to himself before John had stepped into the lounge area Topher keeps adjoining the lab. He’s read the blogs, seen the news reports, and seen the words ‘I Believe in Sherlock Holmes’ plastered everywhere. The man could do anything. Coming back from the dead is really just a minor inconvenience at best if everything he’s read is to be believed._

_The hope is more devastating than the death itself, Topher realises. If the hope turns out to be true the suffering will be worth it but John does not know how long he can wait before something gives. The question is when and Topher highly doubts that is high on Mr. Holmes’ radar at the moment. He may say he’s doing this to keep Sherlock safe (“they might come after me and it’s probably best that they actually can’t find me”) but he’s doing this to keep himself safe as well. This way he’ll have something to come back to. Even if that something isn’t ideal or expected._

_“If he comes back at some point during the five years,” John plows on, “I’m to be released if he serves the equivalent time as my handler. DeWitt has agreed to that.”_

_That isn’t Topher’s concern either way but he has to point out the obvious. “And what if he walks in the front door say at year four? You expect him to serve four years with you and you’re okay with being wiped for eight? That’s more than DeWitt asks out of the people she blackmails into doing this.”_

_John shrugs. It’s disturbing and Topher is not a man gets disturbed. He’s seen plenty of desperate types in this line of work but none so blasé about what they do here. “If I’m right I have a feeling that he might give your boss a headache and she’ll either cut down the time or kick us both out.” A ghost of a smirk at that thought._

_“More like kick him out and hold you to the letter of your contract,” Topher corrects, and yes this is the voice of experience talking here. “Adelle DeWitt does not let what hers go until it isn’t hers anymore.”_

_John bristles at being referred to as anyone’s property. “I have a feeling,” he bites out. “That I’m going to be as much of a problem when he comes back as he is.”_

_Topher sighs, exasperated. “Why does everyone doubt my work? When he comes through that door, if he ever does, you are not going to know who he is. There is going to be nothing up there for you to remember! Nothing!”_

_“Oh I’m not doubting anything. I just happen to think you lot are dealing with something deeper than memories and brain matter. You throw the words ‘Tabula Rasa’ around here way too much for my liking. If what you did was perfect none of us would glitch, would we? “_

_Before Topher can attack that statement, he’s well used to defending himself on that front, John starts outlining his terms. They are unusual to say the least but Topher agrees. He can’t resist an experiment, especially on a willing subject. They settle out the details in the paperwork, John signs them, and Topher sends Ivy off to give them to DeWitt. She’ll approve it without even reading it probably. She’s already made clear she’s willing to make a lot of exceptions for this man; Topher makes a mental note to take out the next Big Bad personally and just maybe, maybe, he’ll get some of those changes he wants made implemented._

_“You think he’ll agree to the terms?” Topher has to ask._

_John doesn’t really want to answer. “I hope he will.”_

_Topher makes a show of humming and hahing. “Well let me think here. I’m a guy who’s come back from the dead to find out not only has my best friend effectively killed himself for a set amount of time but I’m have to work with him in this state for as long as he’s already been here.” He pauses. “It sounds an awful lot like tit for tat to me.”_

_John waits. Topher goes on. “ ‘You made me think you were dead for however long so here, I’m dead for the same amount of time but you have to hang out with me but not me during that time. Or else you wait until I finish my five years. Deal with it.’” John’s widen as he realises what Topher is implying. Topher keeps talking before John can say anything. “I buy the self protection reasons and I buy the protecting him reasons, the first more than the second, but you gotta admit, doc, that there’s a little bit of nicely built in punishment in here too.”_

_Apparently, judging by the look of anger and confusion on his face, he hadn’t actually thought of it that way before. Bless his heart, Topher thins snidely. Then John e sort of nods as some dark part of him warms up to the idea. “Not my intent, but now that you mention it this could solve a few problems later.”_

_“Like how many teeth he’s going to lose when you punch him in the face?”_

_He laughs a little at that. It’s rusty from ill use but there is a little bit of warmth still in it. “Like that.”_

=====================================================================================

_He takes a look at the equipment and lets out a low whistle. “Impressive.”_

_“I know right!” Topher goes on and babbles about how amazing this mind eraser and mind rewriter is. A sad smile crosses his face as he is reminded of Sherlock whirling around a crime scene, proclaiming his own brilliance in the same way that Topher is now. It has always been John’s lot to appreciate brilliance than to actually be brilliant himself so he tells Topher, again, that he’s impressed. He still regards the chair in the middle of the room with some measure of distrust. At little late for that, he thinks as he remembers the papers he’s signed and the arrangements he’s made._

_It could be five years before he’s himself again. The thought is still more liberating than it is terrifying. That terrifies some last speck of him that is a logical, reasonable, thinking person. Sherlock would be doing his best to talk him out of it were he here right now. Hell, anyone with him would be telling him this was a mad idea. The maddest of ideas._

_He needs it though. He needs to not remember, he needs to not think, he needs to not be here for awhile. He doesn’t want to kill himself and he doesn’t want to come back from wherever he is going to go and have the pain be numbed or the memory of his friend and his death gone forever. Both had been offered and he had furiously declined._

_There also was that hope. That hope that somewhere out there Sherlock Holmes was still alive and if Sherlock had gone to ground to protect himself John knew the first person anyone would go after would be him. He’s in the last place anyone would think to look and they won’t find him here if they do. He’s going to keep drilling that into his head for his last few minutes of self awareness instead of the fact that this is an act of self preservation and, apparently, a bit of revenge._

_“I’ve got everything ready to go,” Topher’s voice informs him. “Are you sure about your specs?”_

_“Very.”_

_“Most people really don’t like the idea that they’re going to remember exactly what’s happened to them while their body has been for hire.”_

_“If you think I’m letting you poke about up there without some sort of safeguard in place you’re madder than I thought.”_

_“And the fact that you’re letting me up there at all says what about you exactly?”_

_John doesn’t bother responding to something that they both know the answer to. “I’m not going to remember everything as it happens,” John corrects, irritable. “I had better not be anyway.” The last thing he wanted was to be aware of the time that was passing, be aware of being not in control of himself, of being a prisoner in his own body._

_“No, no, no, you won’t. It’ll all be there for you to fondly reflect upon afterward if you choose to.”_

_“If I didn’t suspect better I’d think that you were none too fond of this job.”_

_Topher shrugged. “I don’t usually get to have nice discussions with Actives with their original personalities intact. Before or after.”_

_John knows this place attracts the desperate and he is certainly one of them. That being said this place also attracts the hopeless and John cannot claim that title entirely. “Don’t suppose you get a lot of feedback from people once their contracts are done.”_

_“Surprisingly they don’t want to hang around too long after. Getting them to come in for their post-Active life diagnostic is like pulling teeth.”_

_John almost finds himself promising to fill out a survey or do whatever Topher wants from people once his time, however much that is, is up but shuts his mouth. If Sherlock is here he’s going to want to go and if Sherlock isn’t here, well..._

_“Would you rather he come or would you rather he be dead?” Topher sounds legitimately curious._

_“Alive, naturally.” John sits himself down on the edge of the chair. If he comes back and Sherlock has been alive this whole time he is going to be furious with him. He’s sure Sherlock has his reasons but his reasons are surely stupid or at least Not Good._

_This is actually almost crueler than what Sherlock has done to him, John thinks. That was of course assuming that Sherlock didn’t find a way to bring him back on his own or cut the time down. Serving equal time to whatever John serves could, as Topher pointed out, add up to an intolerable number and John would much rather come around sooner rather than later. Even if it is only to fight about who has done what to whom and which articles of trust have been breached._

_John would just be grateful for the chance to argue with him again. The chances as they stand are that he’ll wake up in five years and nothing will have changed. At least he won’t be aware of those lonely years passing._

_“If he does come,” John begins, “keep an eye on him, would you?” Topher starts and looks at him. John isn’t sure why he’s bothered asking a man that he’s known for all of an hour to look after a potentially dead friend of his. Topher may remind him of Sherlock but letting the both of them in the same room might mean the end of the world._

_At least that would be exciting._

_“He’s not going to like what he finds and he can be incredibly slow on the uptake when it comes to what we would call the obvious.” He glares at Topher when he snorts. “Keep him entertained, let him poke around in here when he gets board or banned, make sure he...” He waves a hand in a useless circle and then lets it fall. “Forget about it.” He lies back in the chair. It feels like an eternity before Topher reclines it. “I’m not going to know anything, right?” he finds himself asking. “I’m going to be totally clean. Nothing left of me until you bring me back, yeah?”_

_“Tabula Rasa,” is Topher’s pretentious reassurance. “Just like everyone down below.”_

_They like to use that term a lot around here. You can call an infant tabula rasa because they’ve experienced nothing. They are no one until they are named and until they learn and grow. John Watson is an adult male with more than enough experience and history to fill several blank slates. He wonders if anyone here has ever actually bothered to look at a slate after it has been erased._

_Enough philosophy, he orders himself. It’s not going to matter in thirty seconds._

_He hears a click of a button and a sees rush of images, light, and pain._

_John Hamish Watson blinks out of existence in three point five seconds._

=====================================================================================

Sherlock Holmes’ first act once he opens his eyes again is to roll onto his side and vomit. A basin appears just in time as he coughs up what he can and, to his disgust, swallows the rest. “How long?” he asks once the room stops spinning and he manages to focus on Topher, who is kneeling at his side and is cautious moving the basin somewhere out of his sight.

“We’ll get to that,” Topher’s deflects. “First though, can you let Charlie know you’re okay? He’s been worried sick.”

Charlie. Charlie who is not John but is. He pushes himself up, slowly as not to bring on more vomiting, and manages to maneuver himself so he’s sitting on the bottom part of the chair with his feet on the floor. “Charlie?”

Charlie’s a little too far away at present to make out. He’s a blur at the doorway at the moment. “Are you okay now?”

When Sherlock’s eyes decide to work properly at a distance he sees Charlie standing in the doorway, like a child hesitating outside his parents’ room, looking concerned and terrified all at once. Of course he does, Sherlock crows triumphantly to himself, of course he does. He holds out his hand. “Do you trust me?”

Charlie comes forward immediately to take the hand. “With my life,” he answered obediently.

“Not Good?”

“A bit.”

Charlie’s responsive is reflexive, just as reflexive as the first response, but he isn’t sure what he’s said and looks to Sherlock for an explanation. Sherlock is overcome with a desire to hug him but holds his arms where they are. “You go for a swim,” he suggests. “I’ll come see you in a minute. I need to talk to Topher.”

“Okay.” Charlie walks backwards out of the lab, keeping an eye on Sherlock until he has no choice but to turn around. 

“He looks better,” Topher says approvingly. “You should have seen him when he first saw you down there. Langton and I managed to keep you separate for a bit but you eventually bumped into each other and he freaked. Like he was shaking you and everything. ‘Wake up, Sherlock! Wake up, Sherlock!’ and you were all like ‘who?’ and he just didn’t know what to do.”

“How long?” Sherlock knows it’s been more than two weeks and he’ll figure out who to blame for that later but he wants to see if he’ll hear the truth from Topher’s lips.

“A month,” Topher admits easily enough. “Now that wasn’t totally my idea, mind you. I was fine with the two weeks but you decided to make yourself disappear whenever we came looking for you.”

A flash of memory, of hiding in the Dollhouse while Topher and the orderlies looked for him. “I evaded you for two weeks.” If there was any proof that some things could not be erased by Topher’s technology this had to be one. 

“There’s only room for one ego in here and it’s me,” Topher corrects. “You pulled a fast one on us for two days. Then you just flat out refused to stay in the chair and kept slipping the restraints.” Topher sighs theatrically. “And considering that I can’t imprint anyone with anything, including their original personality, while unconscious, I figured I would just wait until you graced me with your presence and five minutes ago you did, thank God. DeWitt is so furious at you that she’s taking it out on me. I’m surprised I’m not dead actually.

” Sherlock does not care about Topher being dead or alive at the moment. He cares about the fact that he remembers more than he ought about being no one, which ideally should be nothing. He remembers wandering around the House like he knew the place but didn’t. He remembers some of art class (his drawings had been hideous) and he remembers eating more than he had ever bothered to eat normally. He remembers finding Charlie (John) and Charlie shouting at him to wake up. He remembers Charlie being gone and missing him without knowing why. 

He remembers being so happy when Charlie came back, took him by the hand, and told him that he would look after him until he woke up.

“What did you and John agree upon?”

“How much do you remember?”

It’s a hard and interesting question to answer. He remembers flashes of events and is aware of what orders those flashes occurred in without having any conception of time. He cannot account for all thirty days of his state but he is confident he could based on what he remembers and what evidence he could doubtless gather. 

He doesn’t particularly want to and he knows that John probably won’t either but it’s useful to know. There was method in John’s madness here. “You did something to let him remember.”

“I did something that would let him remember what we imprinted him with. Surprisingly he didn’t trust DeWitt to stick to her word. When his number is up he’ll be able to see what exactly we’ve done.”

“But you didn’t wipe him completely,” Sherlock presses. “You left something of him in there just like you left something of me.”

Topher smiles slightly and shakes his head. “That, my friend, I did not do. As much as I don’t like to think about it, it could be a very bad thing in certain cases, some things just continue despite wiping or crop again despite wiping. No matter how much I try to ignore it or explain it” He settles into his chair. Sherlock spins to face him properly. He nearly throw up again.

Topher tells him about some previous case studies. Two friends unknowingly being Actives together and seeking each other out. Two Actives falling in love, at least as much as they can, and that love surviving imprint after imprint and continuing even when they were returned to their original selves. “Some things just are that deep,” he finishes. “And, yeah, I may have left him a little bit more open to being stimulated if you were to come back.” Topher settles onto his stool and hands Sherlock an envelope. “I think you and I both know that he’d rather know you were alive sooner rather than later. He may not quite understand it but it makes him feel good and I think that’s what he really needed more than a mind wipe.”

Not that Sherlock ever plans to fake his death and leave John behind again but this conversation with a man who is obviously uncomfortable with the subject matter clinches it. He shoves the scientific evidence that he and John are something unique away. He’d always known it and he doesn’t need the proof for it. He ends the discussion and asks what the envelope is. Topher grins.

“Safe deposit box key.” He hands over a business card next. “John gave it to me to give to you but I honestly forgot all about it until you were on the floor.”

“What’s in it?”

“Aren’t you the one who loves mysteries? Go find out for yourself!”

===================================================================== 

DeWitt has Sherlock sent to her office before he can leave. Sherlock can hear the staff leaving and Langton herding people away from the door as he and DeWitt fire everything at each other over Sherlock’s stint as a doll. Once again Sherlock is floored at how concerned with legality and liability an illegal operation is. Sherlock finds himself banned again, this time for a month, and is escorted off the premise with his keys and passes taken away. He is also escorted to his hotel room and left there. It’s all rather excessive and everyone knows that he’s figured out alternate ways into the building without raising the alarm by now. Sherlock plans to keep to his suspension though, that is aside from sneaking in to the pod rooms and visiting John – he thinks he can train him to wait where needs to wait in the one spot where the cameras are blind.

He also has to relish in the victory that is the shortening of his and John’s sentence and John can’t even say that he did it intentionally. DeWitt is far from impressed with Charlie’s behaviour off assignment and, of course, is not Sherlock’s biggest fan and wants the both of them out of her hair. A handler she can’t control is undesirable as is an Active that may be defective. She has knocked the contract down to one year, which means that in eight months they will be free. Sherlock is very tempted to make things miserable enough that DeWitt throws up her hands and cuts them both loose even sooner but knows full well that the likely reaction will be the pair of them being sent to the Attic. He has no desire to risk that anymore than he has to.

There also remains his agreement with John, that he fulfill his end of the bargain. Technically he’s already failed in having eighteen months become twelve but he did not engineer it that way. He hopes that John will understand that and forgive him for it. What’s one more impossible forgiveness to add to the list, he says to himself.

Once the coast is clear he heads off to the bank on the card Topher had given him. The box is empty but for his near forgotten Stradivarius, some staff paper, and a note.

_You’re probably going to need these_

-J

Terse and awkward. He doesn’t want to give away anything this way and feels silly in that he feels that this may never be read. Sherlock folds up the letter and puts it in his blazer pocket. It will remain there until they are back in Baker Street. When he gets back to the hotel he plays his fingers numb as he furiously but tenderly plays every single song that John likes – even the ones that Sherlock hates so much that they physically pain him to hear or play. The composing will happen later but tonight this is what feels right. They had found each other as themselves, they had found each other as Sherlock and Charlie, and they had found each other as Charlie and...whatever he had been.

He supposes he should think more about his experience in that state but decides it is best left alone. He can be honest with himself now and know his true reasons for doing it.

Bach’s Chaconne is the last thing he plays that night. If he shuts his eyes and thinks hard enough he can almost believe that John is sitting in the arm chair with a cup of tea, nodding off as he nods to the music.

Several miles away and several storeys underground an Active named Charlie settles into his sleep pod with a smile on his face. He doesn’t know why he’s excited, why it feels that something good is coming very very soon, but he likes the feeling. He hopes this feeling stays longer than the other ones.


	8. Part Eight

Connor Ramsey does not like flying. He’s tapping his fingers, shifting in his seat, and is unable to concentrate on anything. He’s set aside two different magazines and has utterly failed to finish a crossword that a child could have completed in fifteen minutes. Sherlock sincerely hopes that Topher made this imprint before he received the work requiring a genius code breaker whose services were required in London immediately. There were closer Houses to London than Los Angeles but Charlie, and Sherlock, had been requested personally. That meant only one thing.

Connor orders a Jameson, which appears instantly. The ice cubes rattle in the glass as his right hand shakes and Sherlock shoots out a hand to steady it. He doesn’t want to end up wearing the whiskey and that rattling is going to drive him mad before this flight is over. Connor’s hand stills and then he shifts the glass to his other hand and wrenches his wrist free. “Can manage myself, thanks.”

The Scottish brogue is almost comforting. Sherlock wonders distantly if Topher actually decided on a whim to make Charlie a Scotsman this go around, or was it because the client had requested it. Sherlock highly doubted that a family history was taken when a person became an Active but it sounds like just the sort of subtle clue that his brother would leave to inform him who was really behind this engagement. Not that Sherlock hadn’t already smelt Mycroft from a thousand other tells present in the work order alone. Mycroft was being incredibly obvious and that was because he wanted Sherlock to know exactly why they were being brought out.

The reasons were fourfold: One, Sherlock had gone off the radar for a month while being a Doll. Two, he’s been poor at reporting the past few weeks. Three, Mycroft wants to see the technology in action, and the fourth reason was because they were officially at the half way point before they were home. Mycroft has always insisted on midpoint check-ins being done in person so here we are. 

Connor is on his third glass of Jameson in what seems like no time at all. “One more and I’ll pass out,” he assures Sherlock when he catches him staring. “Just give us some Asprin when we land and I’ll be right as rain.” He waves for a fourth, downs both drinks and then promptly passes out. This imprint has apparently hacked his own body – he’s a man after Sherlock’s own heart. Or he would be if he was real and his heart wasn’t already the possession of another man. That man actually couldn’t abide Jameson either. It took far more than four drinks in quick succession on an empty stomach (Connor had vomited an hour earlier) to put John to bed but Jameson always hit him harder than anything. 

Sherlock gets out of his seat and paces the front part of the aircraft. The seat belt sign is on but no one rushes to tell him to sit down. Mycroft bought all the seats on this plane and gave the staff specific instructions to leaves Messrs Ramsay and Holmes alone for the duration of the flight unless they were asked for. He looks over at Connor, who is dressed in clothes that would look more comfortable on Sherlock than on John, and wonders if Topher has been ordered to curb Charlie’s profound glitching issues, has taken steps to curb it anyway, or if Charlie is keeping quiet on purpose. There has been nothing as obvious as the day in the medical area and he supposes he has to content himself with what he remembers. That and what he has learned from his remembered experiences as an Active and what he has found out through security footage.

Charlie had been withdrawing before but he’d grouped with Sherlock, especially once he realised something was wrong and that he’d have to take the lead here. Recently Charlie has been sharing some meals with one of the other Actives but Sherlock suspects that’s only because this Active is ex military as well and he recognizes some sort of familiarity in the movements and the stances. It is certainly so for the other Active. Topher had rolled his eyes at him and told him not worry about it. Sherlock had snapped something at him about him not needing to program his own friends.

Sherlock settles back down in his seat again and decides that sleep is the best option for the time being. The in-flight films are dull and he has never been able to read particularly well while airborne. Sleep or maybe that crossword book that Connor was working on. For the time being he shuts his eyes and thinks of all the ways he is going to verbally eviscerate Mycroft when he sees him. He has not spoken to the man face to face in sixth months so he has to make up for lost time.

=================================================================================

Connor gratefully accepts the Aspirin tablet when he wakes up but is even more excited that they are actually being allowed to sleep before being summoned in. This reeks of delay tactics – probably because whatever problem Mycroft magicked up to bring them here has since been solved or made irrelevant – but that gives Sherlock time to reacquaint himself with his city. He keeps his mobile close, and checks Charlie’s readings ever three and a half minutes, but he spends the night walking through London. He actually sits in front of Baker Street for half an hour just admiring the building and watching Mrs. Hudson bustle back and forth from the kitchen to her sitting room as she sets herself up in front of the telly for the evening. He almost succeeds in contenting himself with sitting out there and heading back to the hotel and into the service of the Dollhouse for another six months. He is very delighted with himself when he doesn’t settle.

Their flat is eerie and Sherlock questions the wisdom of coming up here. It’s been preserved to museum like detail. Mrs. Hudson dusts weekly but otherwise, like before, nothing had been moved since Sherlock had last stood in this room. The chairs still hold the imprints of their latest occupants and neither of which is John.

Despite his usual lack of respect for personal space Sherlock has only seen inside John’s room a handful of times and only for brief periods. Usually it’s been to rouse him or to take something and quickly leave. John’s bedroom is purely functional: it is where he goes to sleep and nothing else. If he wants to read, work, or relax it is done in the sitting room. What Sherlock knows he will find there will be minimalistic and functional but he finds it difficult to see it even more so.

The room is utterly barren; all that remains is the furniture. The bed is stripped bare and the desk, dresser, and closet are all empty. Of course it is you daft idiot, he snaps to himself, John was meant to have moved out. It wouldn’t do to leave his belongings behind. He wonders where that all is. He’s limited the possible locations to two as he perches on the edge of the bed and then lays down on it. John’s room may have been military neat and ornament free but it had been John’s room. This was just a room in a flat and might as well not be a part of the rest of it. 

Six months. Six months and they’d be out. They’d come back, John would want to sleep to get over the jet lag, then they’d move everything back in, and neither of them would ever do something as stupid as effectively killing themselves for any length of time in the name of anything. 

He sneaks out just before sunrise and is back into the hotel. Connor wakes up, glares at him, and then rolls over. “Couldn’t sightsee in the morning could you?” he grumbles into his pillow.

“I wasn’t sightseeing.” He needed have bothered saying anything it all since Connor apparently has the unique ability to pass out on willpower alone. Sherlock’s never prized sleep highly but he cannot help but envy Connor at this moment. 

He leaves a note for Connor to text him with the meeting location, though Sherlock can deduce where Mycroft wants them easily enough, and heads back into the night.

================================================================== Connor texts him when he wakes up but Sherlock is already at home in the small room that has been designated as their waiting area- he’s found four rather alarming holes in security and the secretary bustling between him and her post is soon to become a fifth. Connor appears right on schedule and is immediately taken aside by some higher up that starts babbling away about whatever nonsense errand Mycroft has cooked up. Something about diplomatic communiqués and money transfers. He moves to follow and is harshly ordered back to his seat by both Connor and the ex MI5 agent. “Mr. Holmes will be here directly.”

He means presently and not directly and Sherlock receives a very direct, and very John-like, glare from Mr. Ramsay. He shuts up as force of habit.

Two minutes later Mycroft looms in the doorway and waves him into his office. The office he has commandeered to be his for the duration of his stay at the embassy at any rate. “The Canadians are being quite understanding,” Sherlock observes. “The secretary that you brought with you is going to be a problem.”

“Of course he is,” Mycroft agrees as he sits down. “He’s the spy that we have Mr. Connor Ramsay set to trap.”

Sherlock raises an eyebrow and helps himself to a seat. “You requested a code breaker when what you wanted was a detective?”

“I have a brother who happens to be one, yes, but I did request a very ordered and logical mind did I not? He’ll crack the code – probably in the next few hours – hand us our ‘leak’ and be on his way.”

“Bit elaborate for a check in, isn’t it?”

“It worked.”

Sherlock decides that he has awarded Mycroft enough of his attention for the time being. Mycroft’s voice becomes a distant buzzing as he takes in the desk, what’s on the desk that is not Mycroft’s in any case, the decor and all the other little bits of seeming minutia that tells him who exactly the occupant of this office is and how he got the position that he did. 

“Still in top order?”

“Of course.” The response is reflexive but Sherlock is pleased, and relieved if pressed to admit it, that his abilities are in complete working order. His uses for them are limited on an engagement because he doesn’t want to incite any unfavourable or unwanted reactions from Charlie and there are only so many times a new Actives joins the House for him to deduce. In truth his reasons for not using his skills, or at least not making a production out of it, when on assignment are so he can keep his attention focussed on Charlie. To be of use to him and to keep him safe.

Somewhere, the pre-John Sherlock Holmes is laughing. The John in his head laughs fondly and welcomes him to his world. John is an accomplished doctor and soldier, both of which have been integrated into Sherlock’s work but purely as background and on an as needed basis. John has never complained all that much about that state of affairs – when he does it’s more about the lack of appreciation than the actual relationship dynamic. He’s fine with providing back up and looking after him because the world might just end if Sherlock Holmes looks after himself and someone has to to the job if he won’t.

Perhaps this reversal of roles is an opportunity for understanding each other even though of them isn’t really capable of appreciating it. It’s actually quite unfair.

“Are you going to tell me about your own experience or shall I wait and ask John once he’s done.”

“You will ask him no such thing!” Sherlock snaps. “He’s furious enough at you as it is.”

Mycroft sighs. “He was furious at me some time ago, Sherlock. If he has any right to be furious at anyone once he returns to us I believe we both know who is going to bear the brunt of that fury.”

Sherlock almost succeeds in keeping his face still but the flinch will not be held back. Mycroft throws him a knowing, chiding, glance, and rummages through the dossier on his desk. “I will expect a report from you by the end of the week then.”

“There isn’t anything to report.”

Mycroft regards him levelly. “Nothing?”

“I remember shutting my eyes after telling Mr. Brink to do it before I changed my mind. When I next opened my eyes I was quite unwell and nearly ruined Mr. Brink’s carpet.” Mycroft’s look remains the same and Sherlock very much want to do what he tries to do when he was a child: attempt to pull it off his all knowing, meddling, face. What John had done to himself, and what Sherlock remembers of the same experience, will be between him and John if anyone else. He almost wants Mycroft to try and force it out of him. It has been some time since he has had a proper, serious, brawl with his brother. His brother doesn’t visibly show signs of conceding defeat but he reaches for the dossier that contains the intelligence on the Dollhouse that Mycroft’s minions have collected along with what Sherlock has managed to send his way. He waves Sherlock toward it but Sherlock refuses to move. Mycroft’s expression sighs along with his voice. 

“This is childish.”

“You wanted to see me. I’m simply behaving the way that I always would.”

“Forgive me but I had assumed you would want to stop something like this from happening again.”

Mycroft is getting a rise out of him. The primary school children down the street could see it with little effort. _Charlie_ would be able to see it if he were present. Sherlock sees it well enough but he moves his chair closer, sends his special ‘reserved for Mycroft Holmes’ black look, and walks Mycroft through the files his people have buggered up, and the information that Mycroft has flat out failed to piece together correctly, as if he were only a barely sentient bacteria culture.

When it appears that the fate of the universe is a pleasant one, for now, Sherlock is released from the office. He needs some air as badly as he needs a cigarette and he chooses the busiest hallway on the hope of pick pocketing some diplomat with a penchant for B&H. 

Two sharp taps on his shoulder cause him to stop and turn. Something bounces off his forehead and he barely succeeds in catching it. B&H, pull pack. He looks up and, out of the corner of his eyes, catches Connor giving him a smile and pointing him toward a hallway that Sherlock has no doubt leads to a nice but mostly deserted balcony. He nods in thanks but Connor is long gone; it takes what little reserve Sherlock has left in him to not go rushing after him. The whole operation is staged. Connor will be safe here.

He clenches the pack tightly in his fist as he storms the balcony. He enjoys a breath of fresh, Mycroft free, air before he realises that Connor had not given him a lighter. A snap of a lighter comes from behind and to his left and a very familiar voice asks him, in a voice of good natured teasing, if he forgot something.

“I didn’t forget anything.”

“Right. That’s was John’s department wasn’t it?” A hand beckons Sherlock in and cups the flame against the wind.

“Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane.” He leans in, lights the cigarette, and steps back.

“Is he really though?”

Sherlock takes a long drag, holds it for a moment and then exhales. For a moment he is several years younger and on this man’s front step sharing a clandestine cigarette. “No. Not in the least. He’s a child, not a lunatic.”

“Going to be nicer to us lot when you get back, then?”

Sherlock chuckles. “Not a chance.”

Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade chuckles. “It’s good to see you, Sherlock.”

“And you.” It’s not a weakness to admit that even though Sherlock knows that he will deny saying it if ever Lestrade mentions it to anyone else in his presence.

“So,” Lestrade gestures to the two chairs he has dragged over to the corner of the balcony. “Care to fill me in?”

=====================================================================================

Lestrade started smoking again three months after John had ‘moved to Sussex.’ First he would steal the odd one from the stash that he knew Karen, his youngest daughter, kept in her room. Then he finally accepted defeat and started buying his own packs. He says he’s managed to keep it to a reasonable level recently but that he’ll go back on the patches once both Sherlock and John are back. 

“There was nothing you could have done,” Sherlock informs him. “We all made very sure of it.”

Lestrade snorts and takes one last drag of his cigarette before stomping it out. “Keep saying it and I might eventually agree with you.”

“There was no way.” Sherlock says as forcefully and as masterful as he ever. “It is an insult to both mine and John’s intellect if you assume that there was.”

Lestrade obviously has no option but to laugh at that and agree that that fair is fair. “Also considering John went for an option that I couldn’t even dream up in my nightmares. Christ, Sherlock. How on earth would he see this as helpful?”

Sherlock decides to not betray John that way and offers a shrug. Lestrade is smarter than Sherlock will give him credit for aloud but does not press. “Have you read his book yet by the way?” 

He hasn’t, he remembers being at one point aware of the fact that John had written up the blog but he has understandably forgotten all about it. Lestrade hands him a freshly bought paperback copy of the book. “Sorry to add to the list of things you owe to him but it is what it is.”

Sherlock will never be out of John’s debt. He’s made a kind of peace with that fact but that won’t hinder him giving everything he has, from doing anything John asks after this is over, to repay him. He takes the book and regards it reverently. The illustration in the background if of an open door with two silhouetted figures, one much shorter than the other, but the large embossed letters proclaim “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” while the author’s name is smaller than either figure in the illustration. Sherlock tucks it into his pocket before he can be annoyed by that any more than he has to be.

Lestrade and he are settling in for another smoke together when Connor taps on the glass door and lets himself in. “Can I have one? Two actually?”

Sherlock hands him two. “Do you have a lighter?”

“Mr. Holmes has matches somewhere I – have we met?” Connor’s attention, and inquisitive stare, have focussed on Lestrade.

The man does his best to recover. “No, sorry. Must have one of those face.” Connor nods but is very obviously unconvinced. Lestrade holds out his hand. “Greg Lestrade.”

“Connor Ramsay.” He doesn’t let go of the hand right away. He nods toward the cigarette. “You were doing so well.”

Sherlock blinks and Lestrade starts. “Sorry?”

“Nothing.” Connor shakes his head and pockets the cigarettes. “Forget I said anything.” He turns his attention back to Sherlock. “It’ll be another few hours.”

“Need any help?”

“Hmm...no. No, I’ll be fine. Thank you.” He realises that he is still holding Lestrade’s hand and yanks it back. “Good to have met you!” 

Sherlock smiles a little as Connor flees the balcony. He finishes his cigarette before Lestrade manages to speak. “John’s Scottish?”

“That was Connor Ramsay, who was born and raised in Glasgow. John Watson has not been present in some time.” 

“I know one thing for certain though,” Lestrade informs him after a moment. “That handshake was John Watson. No doubt in my mind.”

Sherlock doesn’t say anything for or against it.

They sit outside and smoke for awhile, Lestrade mostly filling him in on the goings on in London and pitching a few cases to him. Shortly before six o’clock Connor appears again, pleased as anything that he’s solved everything and that Mycroft is flying them out within the hour. This time he does not acknowledge Lestrade, who takes this as his cue to leave. “I’d ask you to keep in touch but I don’t suppose that’s allowed is it?”

Sherlock shrugs. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Lestrade holds out a hand and Sherlock takes it. “Look after yourself. I’ll see you both in six months.”

“You may rely on it.”

A few hours later Sherlock and Connor are on a private flight back to Los Angeles. “What happens in six months?” Connor finally asks.

“Follow up visit.”

“What, the both of us? Mr. Holmes didn’t mention anything about that.”

Sherlock ignores him and returns to “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”. He remembers mocking each and every single one of these blog entries but they’re as precious to him as first edition Euclid now. Connor takes a look at what he’s reading and rolls his eyes. “Didn’t take you for the type.”

“Not asking your approval, am I?”

“Have you ever?” Connor takes drains another glass of whiskey, the magical fourth that puts him under for the rest of the flight. The question was one inflection away from being rhetorical and two away from being teasing.

Six more months, he reminds himself as he settles into the “The Geek Interpreter,” six more months and this will all be over. He’ll be able to know for certain what John means instead of deciding what’s the imprint, what’s Charlie, and what’s John.

When he first started this he thinks he knew where he stood. Now he is so far adrift that anything could be anything and it’s safer to just ignore it all if he wanted to keep sane.

Six more months.


	9. Part Nine

Time is a simple concept. Time passes precisely as it should. Time does not go faster or slower - it just passes. This is fact. It has been fact for all the years that Sherlock has been alive. He has allowed for the illusion of time slowing or speeding up in moments of duress but when Sherlock’s life, or John’s he has to amend, is not in danger everything feels precisely as it should when it comes to time passing.

Somewhere both biological and mental clocks acknowledge that six months have passed precisely as they should. That being said he swears he has felt years pass faster than these six months have done. He partly blames the fact that they have not been on a high risk engagement in nearly two months. It seems that Miss DeWitt has decided to retire Charlie from assassin, criminal, and espionage duty in advance of his actual retirement from the Dollhouse. The past few engagements have had Charlie serving as friends, friends pretending to be boyfriends, and diplomatic courier sort of missions. Sherlock has spent most of these engagements in the back of a van watching vital signs and knowing with a certainty beyond what he's used to that nothing will go wrong.

Boredom can cause the illusion of time crawling but Sherlock has not been bored. DeWitt has managed to keep them out on constant engagements – she’s clearly trying to get as much use out of Charlie as she can before he’s gone – and he’s been inserting himself into Topher’s research and very selective development as much as Topher will let him, knowing or otherwise. 

The months have crawled by but the final one is here and it is by far the strangest. Charlie is eating dinner and Topher has just returned Foxtrot (the red haired, depressed, accountant) from her sojourn as Topher's soulmate. It is an indulgence that DeWitt grants him every year and Sherlock can’t help but scoff at the idea. He's seen enough desperate people turn to the Dollhouse to supply a friend or a lover and he is very thankful that John had requested he not be one of the second variety. Seeing Charlie programmed to be a best friend for somebody else is hard enough. This is laziness. They cannot, or will not, find friends or lovers of their own so they have one created to their specifications instead. Sherlock had managed without help and if he can do it everyone else certainly can.

“The stars aligned for you and you know it,” Topher tells him as he slides a mug of tea over. “Some of us would rather not bother with this bff crap. Or wait for it.”

Or work for it, Sherlock finishes in his head as he accepts the mug and sips. Topher then asks what DeWitt was screaming at him for this time. “Once again she is of the opinion that Charlie’s lack of socialization is my doing.”

Topher snorts. “Charlie’s social,” he giggles. “He says please and thank you and says hello when people talk to him.”

“And that is the one reason I am still alive.”

“Seriously though, that’s not good for him. Okay don’t turn your ears off because we’ve had this talk before. Sherlock? Sherlock...”

Sherlock returns to the conversation grudgingly. “He socializes with me," he corrects. "That’s always been good enough for him.”

"And Victor. Don't forget Victor."

Victor, a different Victor from the one that had posed as one of Mycroft's agents, is the only other Active that Charlie gives more than a 'hello' to. It's probably because Victor, as much as Sherlock can tell from the proximity he allows himself to Victor, has a military history as well. There's something in the stance and the shadows of his gestures that Charlie finds familiar but confusing. It's not the same as Charlie's reactions to him but Sherlock had rather hoped it would be enough to shut DeWitt up. It was better than it had been before but DeWitt, Sherlock knew well enough, was a woman who did not tolerate any weak links - no matter how unsubstantial.

Langton interrupts the pseudo conversation by dropping a file on the table. “Last engagement.”

“Oh, right!” Topher breathes. “Charlie’s contract is up tomorrow isn’t it? Man doesn’t a year fly by!”

Topher wisely quiets after that and turns his expression into something much more sullen. Sherlock opens the file. He shuts it after he reads the first paragraph. “What is this?”

“Unusual,” Langton agrees. “And a bit of an experiment.”

“I don’t want a pilot project thrown on him on his last day of work.”

“As you just said, this is his last day of work. Would you rather sit this one out?”

Sherlock shakes his head and goes back to the file. He’s managed this far – he is not leaving John alone at the end.

=====================================================================================

Rossum and the Dollhouses are experts at creating personalities, thus Sherlock has always assumed that the knowledge to put original personalities into other bodies existed. It could potentially be a lucrative service to offer but Adele DeWitt, and most of the other Dollhouses in operation, refused to expand their line of products to that. Sherlock has faith that that will remain the party line so long as Mycroft and whatever his people have planned are on the case. He may have many things to say about Mycroft and his approaches to things but Sherlock knows this one will succeed. He has been forwarding information this entire time after all. 

The experiment in this engagement isn't precisely body switching but as Sherlock goes from reading the work order to shaking hands with the client he understands why DeWitt has allowed this engagement to go on. Their client is Michael Davner, an eighty year old retired businessman whose body can be found on life support at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre. His mind is currently imprinted into one of the House’s Actives, this one a tall and lanky red headed bloke code named Mike. This is Mike's first engagement.

Michael is dying and his final wish is to spend one more day with his lifelong friend Roger Neibert as a young man. They had met as school children and had been inseparable ever since. They went to the same universities and started a very lucrative business together. They had never married and had lived in the same apartment complex three floors apart from one another.

Roger had died five years ago of brain cancer. He was gone five months after his diagnosis and had died not knowing who Michael was. 

One of the many companies that the two friends had invested in over the years had been the Rossum Corporation and Michael had always been the more thorough of the pair. In return for not exposing Rossum’s Dollhouses to the world DeWitt had arranged for Roger’s brain scans to take place in Rossum’s machines so that Michael could one day have his friend back if he wanted. For a limited time only of course.

Michael’s health has been on a steep decline for the past three years. If you ask the doctors they will say years of smoking and failure to maintain the lifestyle change required by a heart attack a year before Roger’s death are to blame. Sherlock knows better; he can see it in the eyes that are on loan to Michael. His best friend and lifelong partner (for lack of a better term) had died. He'd wished to follow but lacked the spine and the conviction to end his own life so he’d let himself waste away instead. It’s suicide but a suicide that no one can see because no one has cared or bothered to look close enough. Sherlock can see it because it is his business to look for and to see what other people do not. Roger will see it as clear as anything through Charlie's eyes soon enough. 

It occurs to Sherlock that this is very likely the last time he is going to see Charlie. What Topher has done with other Actives whose terms have ended with the end of an engagement is to wipe the imprint but keep the Active unconscious – in hibernation if one can use a computer term – for a few hours before he removes the architecture, GPS, and then restores them to their original personality. Charlie will become Roger and once Roger is gone it will be John standing beside him again. His heart tightens with anticipation, as does his stomach, at that thought. The wait is very nearly over.

A part of him feels that he should say goodbye or at least make some sort of gesture as Charlie settles himself into the chair for what is going to be the final time. It’s a crowded room in here with Sherlock, Topher, Michael, and Mike’s handler, standing around them but Charlie has eyes only for Sherlock. He raises two fingers in a slight wave. Whether it's a greeting or a farewell Sherlock can't tell but he returns it when no one is looking at him.

The circle lights up and Sherlock witness a proper, albeit temporary, resurrection. It is impressive. That is certain. Roger Neibert is understandably confused and angry about what has happened once he sorts out what has happened. This imprint of Roger is from two months prior to the deterioration that would take his memory and his death but he is sharp enough to understand what has happened quick enough. Sherlock had failed to account for Roger having to adjust to reading Michael's body language in a body that wasn't his so it takes slightly longer for Roger to figure out exactly what has happened. 

"So I'm meant to be overjoyed at this opportunity to relive our youth? Seriously, Michael? What the hell were you thinking. I thought I was the one with the brain tumour!" Roger's eyes are flashing and is barely managing to stop himself from attacking his friend and beating him to death.

"You would have done the same," Michael snaps back with an infuriating level of certainty. He can't be sure and everyone knows it. "You would have done it if you'd know what I know."

"I would have asked your permission," Roger snarls. It's a sound that Sherlock has never heard from John. "I would have told you what I had learned and what I was going to do. I would have given you a choice!"

"Well it's not like you remember dying! Or that you'd remember giving me consent when the time came! For all you know I did ask."

It is a vicious, terrible, argument between two old friends who know every button to push and every weak spot they can exploit. Topher and Mike's handler, Anita, respectfully leave the room but Sherlock stays and watches. As he watches these two men argue he realises that he could very easily be in this scene twenty four hours from now. Just when things look ready to become violent Michael finally breaks and just hugs his friend tight to him. Roger is stunned and awkward but soon enough his face softens and he returns the embrace just as tightly. They’re speaking loudly but their words are muffled through clothing and bodies and Sherlock finds himself doing his best to not overhear. 

It’s Roger who notices that Sherlock is still there first. “Sorry,” he apologizes. “This is going to be a bit weird for me for the whole day.” 

“Understandable.” 

“So....” Roger rubs his hands together. “One day to live and we can do whatever we want? Do you still have our motorcycles? Please tell me you didn’t sell those, Michael, so help me.”

“I’ve still got them. Anita? Do you still have those keys I gave you?”

While Roger and Michael are picking out motorcycle gear from the wardrobe Anita leans over and asks Sherlock if Michael has told Roger how he plans the day to end. Sherlock shakes his head and knows that if Michael is smart he will say nothing until Roger has no choice but to comply. Sherlock had not originally intended to have John watch him die but if he had he would not have asked his permission either.

==============================================================================

The day is spent trailing two friends on motorbikes in a van. Anita tries to keep conversation going but Sherlock is too invested in John’s account of the final affair with Moriarty, both published and unpublished. John had never updated his blog with a write up of the final case they’d shared but he had taken the time and worked through the pain to include it in the book. Sherlock hopes that the publishers had given him a bonus for tacking that in since he knows that John had to have refused at least thrice to do it. That account was precisely the way that Sherlock would have expected John to have perceived the case. John had refused to divulge their final conversation aside from Sherlock’s attempt to make him believe him a fraud and Sherlock knows that was where the publishers had decided it was better to just let the man have his way or else lose the book entirely . Or be shot at.

What was tucked in the back of his particular copy were notes detailing exactly what problems John had seen in the whole thing. Lestrade had pinned a note to them saying that he’d stumbled upon them before Mycroft had called to stop him from starting the missing persons investigation. “Stumbled” here meant “tipped off by John somehow.” Maybe an email, a cryptic comment about his last will and testament being stashed under the floorboards or something but John would not left these notes lying about Baker Street for anyone to stumble across. Sherlock judged he’d hidden them somewhere in Sherlock’s own room – Sherlock had shown him three of the seven hiding places that Lestrade did not know about and he very much doubted anyone would have thought to check his room for anything like this.

John had done his best to make them look like ravings but there was a sane mind here. _Keep your eyes fixed on me_ was repeatedly written on the page along with _Stay exactly where you are_. Notes about the cyclist knocking him down, about him not being allowed close enough to the body, a hand drawn map of the location and where everyone and everything was, notes about the convenient crowd of people who had appeared to take him away, and the damning fact that only John could know: that if Sherlock had really wanted to kill himself there wouldn’t have been a production made of it. He would have just offed himself with whatever tools he had at hand and that would have been the end. There was a reason for the theatrics.

Sherlock often accused John of seeing but not observing but he also knew that John always caught up to him eventually. Grief obviously had slowed him down significantly but he had it in the end. Of course he hadn’t been sure, asking John to believe Sherlock had pulled off faking his death and lying to everyone for so long was too much, but he had kept it to himself and then guarded that secret by hiding himself away. Moriarty had said that John had shown his hand at the pool and Sherlock had often wondered if John had caught on that his hand had been shown equally as blatantly that night. It seems he had after all. It’s a fact that warms Sherlock’s heart a little. 

It would take two deaths, a faked one and a quasi one, to put things into perspective. God forbid they actually talk to each other, Mind Palace John laments. Not for the first time Sherlock wonders if this had been part of John’s plan all along. Doubtful, but it would be brilliant if it was. Sherlock will get the chance to ask him soon enough. He smiles despite everything.

The friends are finishing supper at McDonalds, apparently that had been their favourite place to sit and talk and indulge in some horrible food, when Anita signals for Sherlock to get out of the van. “We’ll be heading out they're done. We’ll take the van and you two can take Mr. Davner’s car. He's had it left here." Sherlock nods and packs up. “Do you think Roger knows?” she asks.

Sherlock shakes his head as he takes the BMW’s keys from her. “Not consciously, no.”

“Unconsciously then?”

“He’s not letting himself think it.” Roger knows in his bones as much as John had known something was wrong. He’s hoping that this is just a lark, that Roger will return to the ether and Michael will go on with what remains of his life.

“Don’t let him run,” Anita near orders him. “We’ve got an engagement to fulfill.”

Sherlock makes a point to not speak to other handlers on the few occasions when he’s been involved on an engagement with more than one Active more than he has to. Their motivations and their goals are not the same and this is why he had always worked alone before meeting John. He turns on his heel and settles into Michael’s car but does not shut the door. Either Roger will storm out of the restaurant in a rage in two minutes or he’ll be in the car ready to follow the van to the hospital in six. He cannot help but be disappointed when he sees Anita and Michael leave in the van and, two minutes, later a very wary Roger settles into the passenger seat.

“He told me he was in a young body to be on an even playing field with me.” They’ve been driving for fifteen minutes and Sherlock has been actually biting his tongue to keep from grilling the man about what he thinks is going on. All Sherlock allows himself to say in response to this non question is ‘he did.’

Roger sighs and leans back. “We’re headed to a hospital aren’t we? He brought me back to watch him die, didn’t he?” There is resignation, disappointment – so he does know exactly how and why Michael had reached this point without the other man having said anything – but nowhere near enough anger as Sherlock had predicted.

“And you’re not angry about it?”

“Oh I’m furious,” Roger corrects. “But he’s done dumber things for me.”

“I very much doubt that.” 

Roger laughs long and hard – it is John’s laugh underneath it at all and it is certainly his giggle that Roger concludes the outburst with. He appears confused by it for a moment, remembers that that is the least of his worries, and presses on. “Okay,” he admits. “This is the craziest thing that I’ve been involved in or that Michael has been involved in by far but he’s done so much for me. I was always the one who wanted to do stuff, I was the one who wanted to experiment with the company or try new things or have him help me. It’s really only fair.”

“And fair is taking brain scans without your knowledge, and then inserting you in another body in order for Michael to watch you die.”

“He did watch me die and I didn’t have the good grace to know who he was when it happened. "

“And that makes everything okay?"

Roger snaps at him to pull over and Sherlock does purely based on reflex. “Look,” he begins once they’ve parked. “I could scream and yell and stomp off and leave Michael to die alone and go back to nonexistence. I’d be well within my rights and all of us know it. I can’t change what choices Michael made after I’d died but there is nothing I can do to punish him for it. I’m a ghost and Michael is a sick old man.” He regards Sherlock sternly and searchingly. “I don’t know if you have a best friend or a wife or someone for whom you would do anything, no matter how stupid or useless, but Roger has always been that person for me and I will do anything for him no matter how much of a git he’s been. God knows it’s usually me who comes up with these mad schemes.”

Roger stops, replaying the words in his head obviously. The word choice was not his own, nor was the voice as an American accent dipped into an English one. Sherlock stops his mind from telling him precisely where in England that accent belongs to, and from confirming whose voice it is, and resumes the drive. When parks the car Roger is still looking at him. “Was that me or was that him?”

“How do you mean?”

“ _Him_! You know. The person this body really belongs to. He English?”

"He has lived in London, or just outside of it, for his entire life." He nearly recites precisely where, within a few blocks, John Watson was born but stops himself just short. He kicks himself mentally for allowing that information to process and for him to say it aloud to an imprint. “Now get up there before Michael does die alone.”

Roger looks at him levelly, mouth moving as if to say something cutting in response but then Roger is off like a shot. Sherlock does not follow. He has seen John’s face, in person and on surveillance, in deep grief and mourning and he has no desire to ever see it again.

===============================================================================

Roger refuses to discuss the time spent with Michael when he gets back. He merely lets himself into the car informs Sherlock in an attempt at a snide tone that he’s ready for his treatment. Sherlock sets “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” down and is about to turn the car on when Roger’s hand reaches out to stop him. Roger’s eyes are welling with tears and is biting into the index finger of his other hand to keep from screaming or sobbing or both. Sherlock almost says John’s name instead of Roger’s.

“Fuck,” Roger curses around the finger. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, f – “

Sherlock decides there's nothing for it. “You’ll be with him again soon.”

“You don’t believe that."

Sherlock shrugs. “I may not but you do, or at least your hope for it. I’ve been told that what I just said is meant to be reassuring.”

Roger laughs darkly at that. “He is actually going to be with me soon. His ashes are going to be scattered in the same place mine are.”

“The thought pleases you?”

“It pleases me immensely,” Roger agrees. That searching look returns to Roger’s face – a look that tells Sherlock that Roger is looking hard at himself as well as at Sherlock. 

Wait, he realises. Roger is not looking at himself...

“Get out of there,” Sherlock growls.

The eyes go from empty to filled with Roger again. “I’m not anywhere," he insists. "He won’t let me in. I mean whatever it is up there that's left of him won't let me in.” His expression softens. “He’s your Michael isn’t he? You’re in this for him, aren't you? I figured you weren’t like that Anita woman or the others. You’re here so long as you get him.” He reaches out and takes Sherlock’s forearm and refuses to allow him to pull away. “Tell me about him.”

“He’s not dead. I’m getting him back today once you’re gone.”

Roger doesn’t even flinch. “How long has it been since you last spoke to him?”

Sherlock's mouth opens in spite of him. "Two years, six months.

“How long since you’ve spoken of him?”

“Six months.” Sherlock wonders how long Roger has been speaking with John’s accent and whether it is intentional. He doesn’t draw attention to it.

“Tell me about him and about how you ended up here.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve just lost my best friend,” Roger tries to snap. It's too laden with grief to have the proper sting. “Because I want to focus on something other than my own misery. Because I’m jealous of the time you have ahead of you.”

“You had your entire lives.”

“Will that be enough for you? Will that be enough for him?”

They both know the answer to that so Sherlock doesn’t bother saying it. Roger reaches over and turns the car on. “Start driving and tell me about him. I’m going to be dead and gone in an hour anyway. The only people who are going to know about this conversation are you and me, what have you got to lose?”

Sherlock cannot find anything to argue with on that point. He also cannot disregard the opportunity to tell his side of their story to John, even if John may not be fully aware of hearing it. He drives and spins the tale of how they met. Of how John killed a man for him less than a day after meeting him, how they worked together fighting crime in London, how perfect they were together despite how horribly they could fight. He tells Roger about Moriarty, about dying to keep John and the others safe. He finishes with what he knows of John's doubts and how they’d both ended up here.

Roger says nothing for a long moment before asking Sherlock if it wouldn’t have been easier for John to punch him in the face once he came back.

“John didn’t want to make it easier for me, you know that by now.” They’ve arrived and parked but neither makes any moves to leave. “He wanted me to see what I’ve done and live with it. Wanted me to grieve as he grieved.” Topher had refused to tell him what precisely John had said to him during their pre-wiping meeting but Sherlock has managed to piece together enough over the past six months. The punishment hadn't been intentional but John had not objected to it once it had been brought to his attention. They were even now. 

“But he believed in you though,” Roger smiles. “He knew you’d come back and that you’d do this for him. He wouldn’t have bothered with all this otherwise. He knew you wouldn’t leave him here to fill out his contract unless you really were dead.”

“I am incredibly selfish when it comes to him. He was betting on that.” He cannot and will not admit out loud, even though Roger certainly knows it, that he would do anything for John. 

Roger says it anyway. “He knows you’ll do anything for him because a) you just did and b) he would do anything for you. He knew you’d want to make amends but wouldn’t know how so he decided to make the decision for you in advance. Now the two of you can say what you need to say and move the hell on. No matter which way you swing it, the whole thing happened nearly three years ago.”Sherlock can only hope that Roger is right. 

It can't be as easy as all that. Roger’s voice had returned to this continent during the last speech and it’s that American voice that asks him if he’s ready. “Are you?” Sherlock asks.

“Of course not!” Roger scoffs. “But I’ve had my time and you and your friend have served yours.”

Normally Sherlock does not take the Actives lift back up to the House. Some handlers like to accompany their Actives to the chair but Sherlock has always elected to take the staff one and rendezvous with Charlie once Topher was done with him. All circumstances considered, this seems like a good time to break tradition.

“Sherlock!” Topher greets once they walk in. “You’re a little early. I don’t think Adele’s got the paperwork done yet. Or at least she’s making your discharge papers are airtight.” He looks over at Roger. “How was your day?”

“Good and bad but that’s like every day I’ve ever had more or less. This one was just a bit stranger than most.” He settles in to the chair and tenses as Topher lowers him down. “You don’t have to stay, Sherlock.”

Sherlock pulls up a stool and sits next to Roger’s head. “There is no need for you to die alone." 

Roger can’t speak so he nods instead, newly welling eyes telegraphing the depth of his emotions. “Does it hurt?” he asks.

“Not at all,” Topher promises. “Hold on tight.”

Roger grips the armrests and mutters something only Sherlock catches("you’d better be waiting you dumb bastard") before Topher pushes the button. 

Roger Neibert dies with both eyes open. He almost looks happy as the borrowed eyes slide closed.

There is a three second period where the eyes open again and it is Charlie staring out of them. That moment quickly passes as Topher hits another button. The ring’s usual white light turns into a warm amber and the body – and it is a body now – slumps in the chair. The breathing evens out into something deeper than simply sleep and the readings on the EKG would normally give Sherlock cause for concern had he not seen these readings before.

“And we’ve achieved hibernation,” Topher needlessly announces. 

“How long until you’ve removed everything?”

Topher cocks his head for a moment in through and then says it will take about two or three hours. “Could you do me a favour though? Go grab the thing off my desk.”

“Thing?”

“You’ll know it when you see it.”

There are many things on Topher’s cluttered desk that are of interest to Sherlock but he knows what Topher is driving at. The wedge is sitting prominently on Topher’s desk, he must have had pulled it from wherever he’s been hiding it just before Sherlock had arrived. There is no doubt as to what it is but Sherlock still picks up the wedge as carefully as he would handle a dangerous chemical to inspect the label.

JOHN WATSON (ORIGINAL)

He handles the wedge with the same care and reverence from the desk back to Topher. He’s finished attaching the leads and setting up the extra programming needed to extract everything properly. Topher nods his thanks but doesn’t look away from his work. “Would you mind holding on to that for a bit? I’ll even let you take him with you when Adele calls you in for the paperwork.” Topher’s eyes meet Sherlock’s through the reflection in the EKG. It is horribly sentimental, both for Topher to offer what he’s offered and Sherlock to accept it, but this is the closest Sherlock has been to the real John in thirty months. He keeps the wedge close to him as he returns to his seat next to John’s head. He can call him John now even though he is not in his own head yet because they are so close. Also he unfortunately knows what John looks like while comatose and this is certainly what lies before him now.

He sets the wedge carefully on his lap and tries to school his hands into remaining folded on top of it but one hand snakes away to take one of John’s and his other hand slides from John’s wedge to John’s forehead. A whisper of “Almost home” escapes him and while he pleased that Topher did not hear it he finds that would not care if he had. His hand returns from forehead to wedge but the other remains tightly around John’s even when Topher looks back.

About an hour later Adele summons Sherlock into her office complete the paperwork. He tucks John’s wedge into his blazer and half listens to Adele highlight the non disclosure parts of the contract as well as the after care for John. “I trust you will not want to come back here so I’ll leave the precise details of the six month diagnostic between you and Mr. Brink, though I warn you that Topher does not particularly like leaving the House let alone the country.”

“We’ll come to some arrangement.” It’s mostly the truth. He’s not willing to set foot in this House or any other ever again but he is certainly not willing to risk John’s health. Topher may not want to leave and Sherlock may not want to come but there can be some sort of happy medium thanks to the internet, Sherlock is sure. Topher and him will have to have a specific conversation with regards to that as well considering what Topher has done differently.

“Before you both leave I need these signed by John,” she slides a pre addressed, and postage paid, brown envelope across the table. “I trust you won’t want to linger here so I’ve taken the liberty of setting up so all you have to do is post it. Please do not try and forge his signature, it will not fool me.”

Sherlock doubts that but he will give John his own papers to sign. He tucks that envelope just behind the wedge and refuses to take Adele DeWitt’s hand when she offers it. She smiles knowingly, it had been a reflex and nothing else, but wishes him and John well. She returns to her computer and Sherlock returns to John intending, and hoping, that they never cross paths again.

Two hours and three minutes later Topher removes the final lead from John’s body. He takes John’s wedge from Sherlock and inserts it into the chair. The light in the ring remains a soothing amber and Topher does not move toward the panel. “You remember waking up, right?”

Sherlock does and knows that that reaction is atypical. Normally once an Active’s original personality is restored they simply wake up as normal and are perfectly fine. Topher had wired things differently with Sherlock, and with John, and thus Sherlock had been quite ill and out of sorts when he’d come back to himself. 

“One month is significantly shorter than two years so he really isn’t going to feel so hot. “ 

“Specify.”

Topher shrugs. “We know he’s probably going to be sick and we know that it took you a few minutes to come around all the way. Aside from that...I’ve never done this before so we’ll have to see.” 

Not words Sherlock likes to hear but as a scientist he knows that this is the best Topher can offer him. Topher’s body language tells him precisely the same thing. John will live, there is no doubt in either of their minds and he will be himself at the end of it all. The question will be how long that will take. 

Sherlock has waited long enough but he can wait longer if he must. 

Doctor Saunders appears in the room and takes a place at John’s feet. “Just in case,” she explains. “I don’t think he’ll need to come downstairs. He can probably settle him in with you until you two head back to England.”

Sherlock gives one grateful nod and sits down again by John’s head. He hesitates at taking John’s hand but Topher gives him a nod to go ahead. “It won’t change anything.” He finally moves to the controls and hovers his index finger over the button that Sherlock has seen him press hundreds of times while waiting for this specific one.

“Ready?” he asks. Simply formality and habit there. No hint of a question.

Sherlock takes John’s hand in both of his and nods. “Do it.”


	10. Part Ten

_It’s not going to matter in thirty seconds._

Has it been thirty seconds? 

It feels like it but doesn’t. It feels like...

_Oh God I don’t feel so well._

His stomach rockets up to his mouth. He rolls to his side and leans over...leans over...leans over whatever he's in and vomits. He tenses, thinks he’s finished, and then vomits again. “I hate McDicks,” he grumbles. He's finished now. Has to be. “Whose goddamned idea was it to get Big Macs?”

_That’s not what I meant to say. Right idea but...what the hell is McDicks?_

**It’s not you, it’s me. Jim Franklin, here. Howdy.**

_Who the hell are you?_

**One of many, many people you’ve been over the past while, buddy. Don’t worry. I’ll be gone soon.**

Noise. So much noise. Different voices, different thoughts, different feelings, and none of it is him. Not that he can sort out precisely what is him but he knows with conviction what is _not_ him. Or at least he thinks he does.

There’s someone trying to talk to him. His eyes apparently have shut and he pries them open to see nothing. He blinks, breathes out frustration, and tries again. All he gets is a big light blur with three dark grey blurs. The one closest to him is insistently demanding his attention. Hands are on his shoulders and trying to keep him from rolling off the chair – since when was he on his side?

He can’t make out the words. It's all just a haze of noise that is somehow overpowering the noise in his head. The timbre and the tone of the voice quickly becomes familiar and some part of him from far away is not surprised that this voice can overpower anything. He can't put a name or a face or anything to what he hears but some other distant parts of him offer different opinions on the pseudo identification. One is in utter shock, one is practically singing with delight, and final one is blazing bright with murderous rage. He shoves all of it even further away. He can't know for sure yet what is what. He'll sort it later and concentrates on trying to listen to the voice. No matter what feelings he's feeling there is one part of him, a near and dear part of him, that tells him that he has to listen. That he trusts this voice for good or ill and that he would follow this voice to the ends of the earth. 

He finally gets a word from the voice. A name. His own name. He can't help but shudder with the relief of knowing at least that much of himself that is true. The voice seems to catch this and says it again - stronger but gentler all at once.

_That’s me. I’m John._

There’s more to it than that but he can’t be bothered with it. He has his name and his has this voice and that’s more than he’s had in...in what?

_Something between thirty seconds and thirty years._

**Thirty months by my count**

_Seriously? Jesus Christ..._

**Could have easily been five years, remember? I stayed for you.**

He’s not confident he understands what that means either.

He shuts his eyes. A bit of a kip will sort everything out. 

Things swim kind of, sort of, back into focus a bit later. He’s lying in something much more comfortable and this time there are two blurs in the different room. One is the blur that belongs to that voice and he can only sort so far as the other blur being a woman. Her voices sounds sort of familiar, like something out of a dream, but he doesn't think he knows her. They’re at the foot of his bed and chatting quietly amongst themselves. A few words that drift his way are intimately familiar.

_I’m a doctor. I have to be._

**You’re a doctor. In fact you’re an army doctor.**

Am I any good?

**Very good.**

_Can’t sort this out can I?_

****

That’s hardly your fault. Give yourself a chance. You always find your way eventually.

_Now where have I heard that before..._

He barely has time to regret the question because _everything_ rushes at him in response to it. Every single thought, moment, and memory, ones that seem like they could be his and ones that definitely aren't, hits him like a tidal wave. The word 'overwhelming' does not even partly do justice to the sensation. He decides it's best to just sit there and let everything wash over him and hopefully into their proper places. No matter how much agony or confusion these conflicting, and sometimes duplicate, memories and emotions cause him.

He doesn't remember making a noise or saying anything but he feels a comforting, sure, pressure on his fore head. The voice that pressure - a hand, he knows it - belongs to tells him to go to sleep. That everything will make sense, that he'll be himself again, when he wakes up. 

He's already tried that. Unintentionally though and he supposes he wasn't asleep very long.

"Sleep," the voice begs and soothes in one breath. "You'll be alright in the morning."

“Promise?”

“Yes.” Fingers wind through his and squeeze tight with no intention of letting up or letting go. He holds tight and lets the tide pull him under. As long as those fingers hold tight to his, and he does the same, he’ll be able to find his way back.

===================================================================================== 

Sleep probably isn’t the best way to describe what John Watson experiences for the next little bit. It’s restful and he certainly doesn’t feel anywhere near as bad as he had but he isn’t confident or comfortable calling it sleep. He is completely senseless as to anything going on in the real world but he is awake and alert inside his own head as memories and personalities are sorted, organized, and put into place. 

The first thing that had been sorted out was who and what John Watson was. After that he'd moved onto why he was here. It's impossible for him to know for sure but he would bet a hundred quid that he'd made some sort of sigh of relief once all that had been dealt with. Once the really important things were sorted he could deal with everything that had happened since sitting down in Topher's chair.

They aren’t proper memories – he can’t feel any emotion or any ties to the events when he is someone else now that he is John Watson again - but he can acknowledge that they happened. He’s pleased to note that he wasn’t made to do or to be anything he hadn't agreed to. The experiences, limited though they may be, when he was in blank slate stage are a little harder to hold on to but those memories actually feel like memories; and the ones that stand out the most are the ones when Sherlock was with him.

He knows that Sherlock is alive. He’s known it subconsciously for a year now but it is totally different experiencing it now as himself and in light of what’s happened. He can remember feeling it when Sherlock was holding his hand and asking him (or rather not-him) if he trusted him for the first time but it is more real now. Even more real than the flashes of recognition and emotion before he'd become himself again. It's yet another wave of information to contend with but this one brings relief and rightness to this little space just below being awake but above dreaming that he's in. 

There is a bit of anger there. Not as powerful as the raw emotion of before but there is still a part of him that wants to punch him in the face. He doesn't think that he will though. He remembers Sherlock’s face the first time Sherlock saw not-him with disturbing clarity in relation to everything else. That pain had never left Sherlock's eyes. 

He doesn’t think, or at least he doesn’t remember, intending this as punishment for Sherlock but if he had he thinks that Sherlock and him are even. They'd each lived with the other being dead but perhaps not and that put them in a place that they very rarely were: on even ground. They'd experienced the same sense of loss, the same cautious hope, and they'd even had the same reasoning in taking the actions they did. Both of them were also equally stupid in what they had done. John doesn't want to think about what he would have done if he'd woken up after five years with no sign of Sherlock. 

Right. That's quite enough of time in your own head. Time to come up.

He surfaces slowly, feels that his hand is empty but hears that he is not alone. Sherlock’s violin brings him up to full awareness and he slowly opens into his eyes to a room that looks and feels familiar but is almost certainly a hotel room. Sherlock has of course defaced the walls but he can’t focus his eyes enough to read what’s on the walls. He does recognize the tallies on the wall that must mark the time Sherlock has spent with him. He may feel sluggish but his ability to count by fives seems to be in fine working order – one year is what he gets.

He pushes that information aside to take in Sherlock Holmes, alive and breathing Sherlock Holmes, as he plays violin to an open window. It’s a familiar tune but more familiar than just John recognizing songs Sherlock plays or his style of compositions. This is something very well known...something festive. 

One year, his mind reminds him. He signed the contract just after Christmas in 2012 that means it's probably near 2014 now. Sherlock is playing “Auld Lang Syne.” Not for the sentiment or the season but because it is appropriate. John swears he can almost hear Sherlock mouthing along with the words, in proper Scots of course.

_And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere! and gie’s a hand o’thine! And we’ll tak a right gude-willy waught, for auld lang syne_

“Sherlock,” he breathes. It’s too weak to carry over even to ears as sharp as Sherlock’s but the man does pause. He stills and listens close but does not turn his head and John does not try to draw his attention. For now it is enough to watch him to see him standing there, know that he’s okay and know that he does care about him – for even if John’s theories are incorrect he did stay with him. 

Sherlock starts playing another song, this one something John had discovered on YouTube some time ago and wanted to hear what it would sound like on a non electric violin. Sherlock had only played it for John the once and griped loudly the whole time. Since then, on the rare moments that Sherlock thought he was alone, John would hear him playing it. He decides to let Sherlock keep that illusion as he dozes off again. This time it feels like he's heading towards something that can certainly be called sleep.

“John?”

Of course he catches on just as John is about to lose consciousness again. He tries, because he has to -not because he wants to, to pry his eyes back open but he can’t. Sherlock’s fingers trap his again but he’s already too far under to squeeze back.

================================================================================== 

The next time John wakes up his fingers are still laced tightly with Sherlock’s. He’s talking to someone else, it must be on his phone because John doesn’t hear a single word from the other side of the conversation. He is amused for the first time in who knows how long when he catches on that Sherlock is arguing with Mycroft about when he can come home. He never thought he would miss hearing this or wish he could hear Mycroft’s end of the conversation. Sherlock keeps refusing to leave until John is well while Mycroft is undoubtedly assuring Sherlock that John can ride home in a horizontal position just as well as a vertical one. John would much prefer getting back into London on his power, especially if he is only going to end up wiped again after the time difference does his head in yet again. Why the hell did he go to Los Angeles? 

The conversation ends with what sounds like Sherlock taking the battery out of his phone and then unplugging the hotel phone from the wall. He mutters something incredibly untoward but John does not even think of thinking ‘not good’ at it. He almost chuckles but manages to keep himself still, he’s not quite ready to let Sherlock know he’s awake if he hasn’t figured it out already.

Sherlock sits with him for ten minutes in silence before getting up. John cracks an eye open at Sherlock’s retreating back to find that he’s picking up a copy of his book from the window sill. It looks very well worn and John's heart warms at that. He carefully, and mostly soundlessly, shifts himself up on the pillows a bit before opening his mouth and hoping he can make his voice carry this time.

“Couldn’t find anything more interesting to read?” Better, he decides, but not quite full strength. Sherlock, however, reacts as though John had bellowed at him. He whirls, barely hanging onto the book as he spins, and the look of shock that crosses Sherlock’s face brings a face hurting grin to John’s face. “You have been waiting for me to wake up, am I right?” he teases. “I can go back to bed if you’d like.”

Sherlock shakes his head vigorously. “No. No, no, you don’t.” It’s a command and a plea all at once and of course only Sherlock Holmes could make that sound like a normal tone of voice. John, of course, makes no move to lie back down. No one makes a move or a sound for what is probably five minutes but feels like an age.

Sherlock slowly shuffles his feet and moves maybe three inches closer to the foot of the bed. He holds out a hand in front of him and there is a ghost of panic in his eyes. Good to know that John isn’t the only one to get flashbacks of that dark day, then and now. At this moment John is here in this bed but also standing in front of St. Bart’s looking at the speck on the roof that is his friend holding out his hand and begging him to stay where he is.

He holds out his own hand in response, straight ahead this time and not up, and says the only thing that makes sense to say. “Keep your eyes fixed on me.” The words have haunted him since they’d been spoken and as he says them finally feels free of them. Sherlock blinks. He is back in the present and he slowly lowers his hand to rest on the edge of the bed to steady himself. John does not lower his arm. “Come here.”

Sherlock walks slowly over to him, reaching, and freezes when their fingers touch. John remembers wishing, wishing harder than he had since wishing to live in Afghanistan, that he could touch him then. That was the last image he held of Sherlock in his mind whenever the image of the fall, or of the bloodied body on the ground, threatened to overshadow all of his memories of Sherlock. He’s never given much thought to the man on the roof’s perception of him, however. He’d thought about what was going through his mind certainly but has never considered what was literally in front of Sherlock.

_I can’t come down so we’ll have to do it like this._

Sherlock’s last glimpse of him had been as a tiny pinprick on a grey road. At least when John had stormed out of the lab it had been up close and in person. The image of John storming out angrily would have been easy to put aside. John even had provided a built in motivator in “friends protect people.”

Their fingers are still touching but neither of them has actually made a move to grab the other. It really is quite silly considering the amount of times they’ve held hands since John has come back to himself and when Sherlock had been with not-him. Their rules of engagement have changed so John considers it now normal to lace his fingers tight with Sherlock’s and perfectly fine to pull Sherlock down into an embrace at the same time; Sherlock somehow manages sit down easily on the mattress without breaking the embrace. 

John wishes he could match the death grip that Sherlock is giving him but he just doesn’t have the energy right now. He does manage to almost succeed in embedding his fingers into Sherlock’s back as if that would stop him from ever leaving him again. Sherlock is doing the same with his fingers as well. No one actually says “don’t do this to me again” or “I promise I will never leave you again” but both sentiments are understood as they release each other. Sherlock starts to move to the chair but John clamps his hand around his wrist and makes space for Sherlock on the bed as he tugs him toward it. Sherlock usually doesn’t respond to breaks in routine very well but he sits down beside John as if he's always belonged there.

“Are you alright?” Sherlock asks him after a few moments of staring straight ahead at the tally of Sherlock’s time in this room and the large declaration that Charlie and John were not the same person.

“Charlie?” John shakes his head. “I got landed with Charlie?”

_“Are you alright?”_

John sighs. “Doctor John Hamish Watson at your service, Mr. Sherlock _Sherringford_ Holmes.” He barely suppresses a laugh as Sherlock sputters and shudders at the mention of his middle name. He knows he’s picked the correct proof as the tiny hint of doubt vanishes from Sherlock’s eyes. “I’m fine,” he promises him. “Everything’s here,” he taps his temple. Sherlock doesn’t say anything but John knows full well that there will be tests later. “How about you?” he asks. “Are you okay?” Now there’s a question he’d thought he’d never ask Sherlock again.

“I am now.” Those three words are soft, quiet, and far from reassuring. “And I am sorry. For before and for all this.”

And that, he is pretty sure, is the first time that Sherlock has apologized for something and meant it. Also the first time Sherlock is apologizing without any sort of ulterior motive. John is surprised that he hasn’t suffered a heart attack but at the same time he doesn’t need to hear it. The fact that they both are here now says enough. “I know,” he turns his head and stares at Sherlock’s ear until the other man rolls his head so John’s looking at his eyes instead. “I’m sorry too,” he echoes. “For all this.”

Sherlock shakes his head. “You wanted to stop thinking and to stop thinking you had to not exist – I’m glad you chose this and not a more permanent option.” John wants to say that the thought had never crossed his mind but he knows better than to lie to Sherlock. He also doesn’t want to start things fresh with a lie. They are silent together for some time, alternately staring at the marker decorated wall and at each other. Sitting next to Sherlock is the most surreal thing John has experienced since sitting down in Topher’s chair and he thinks Sherlock is thinking something very similar. Eventually Sherlock’s gaze wanders to abandoned book on the floor.

He taps Sherlock’s foot with his own. “Did you like it?” Another question he’d gathered he’d never get to ask. He fully expects Sherlock to scoff and roll his eyes at how dramatic it was but instead Sherlock tells him he did like it well enough. 

“Reading that was like you were still here.”

It’s a big admission but it leaves Sherlock’s lips as if it were just another piece of a puzzle. John isn’t going to be fooled like this ever again. “I always was here,” John tells him, reaching for his hand again and squeezing tight. One or both of them were going to end up with numb or broken fingers by the morning. “Just underneath the surface, I was always there. You know that.”

“It wasn’t the same.” His head slides across the headboard until it’s resting on John’s shoulder. John rests his on top and breaths in.

“I know.” 

Part of John wishes that they could just stay like this forever. That way Sherlock or him wouldn’t do anything as insane as what they have just done and wouldn't hurt each other again. It is neither fair nor realistic, though, and John knows that he cannot remain in this room and in this country forever. London in his soul; if he hadn’t met Sherlock he would have gone bankrupt staying in the city and he won’t be truly put right again until he’s back. Specifically back in the sitting room of 221b Baker Street.

“When can we go home?” 

“Whenever you’re ready.”

John takes his head off Sherlock’s and stretches out his arms, the bad shoulder gives a painful but satisfying pop. “How’s tomorrow sound to you?”

Sherlock beams and eagerly reaches for both mobile and battery. John chuckles and gets himself up off the bed so he can plug the hotel phone back in – he is famished and he knows that Sherlock hasn’t eaten since he’d been brought here. He is beyond delighted when his body obeys him and he easily manages to get on his hands and knees to plug the thing back in and order something up for them. 

Fifteen minutes later, just when Sherlock and him are finally somewhat ready to discuss the actual mechanics of the fall without resulting the blows, John yawns and almost falls out of his chair. Sherlock is up and out of his chair and pushing him back into his seat at lightning speed. He manages to stop Sherlock's worried breath of his name before he exhales it. "Still a bit out sorts, I reckon." He shouldn't be surprised but it frustrates him.

"Take all the time you need." Sherlock reminds him that their flight is leaving in six hours but that that can be changed. "I can wait."

John lets Sherlock help him to, and into, the bed and moves to leave a space for Sherlock. He doesn't take it right away, he probably has a few things to pack up. "I know you can," he acknowledges, gently. "I really can't. If you have to put me on the plane unconscious I want you to do it. At least that way I'll sleep through the jet lag."  
As consciousness starts to fade he thanks Sherlock. The urge to punch him almost comes back when Sherlock asks why. 

"For not being dead, for staying, for...for everything." Two years ago he'd wonder if Sherlock would understand everything from that strangled, emotion laden, sentence but he knows he doesn't have to worry about that either. The bed dips and awareness leaves him as he hears Sherlock whisper a 'you're welcome' and a 'thank you for coming back.'

"Any time."

===================================================================================== 

It takes him a little bit to get back into things. A lot happens in two years and Lestrade has been instrumental in reintegrating John into his city. Sherlock has spent so much time away and doesn't care about every little thing in the news or otherwise so he spends a lot of time with Lestrade at the pub. Usually Sherlock is there too, not because he cares about the information but because he can't allow John out of his sight for anything longer than a trip to the loo. John's getting a little bit used to that now, if only because exploding at Sherlock may actually break him and John knows he'll get the message quick enough without help. It's almost disturbing how sensitive Sherlock is to his needs and wants and moods. Some things have not changed, he's still as maddening as ever, as clueless about other people, and still can't pick up after himself or keep body parts out of the fridge, but there's a different dynamic at hand here. John knows he's a little different too. He isn't sure to whether to blame the Dollhouse for that or to blame the fact that he has been granted a second chance with his best friend.

Sherlock and him eventually did go over the Fall and both are surprised and pleased and how much John did manage to get. He didn't get the whole mess naturally - John knows he owes Mycroft an apology but hasn't quite got the nerve or the desire to do it quite yet - but he got there. He always finds his way in the end. He's heard Sherlock say that before, in some form or another, but he'll take hearing it again.

Mrs. Hudson, naturally, is over the moon to have them both back. She hugs them both near to death and fusses over them for well over a month before she goes back to 'not your housekeeper.' Sherlock doesn't take a case until John has gotten his fill of London and Sherlock without (many) interruptions. John really could have gone a bit longer but he knows the itch in his fingers and the hunger in his eyes better than Sherlock does now and agrees to help Lestrade out with this latest mess of murders. "It's been light until you lot got back," Lestrade grumbles. "Couldn't you have stayed underground a bit longer." He's joking but also knows full well that he'd be ignored if he were serious. It's not really his and Sherlock's style to be all that subtle. 

John hasn't thought of the Dollhouse , or the Fall, in months when he comes home to find an envelope from the Rossum Corporation in his post. He rips it open with the decisiveness of stripping sticking plaster off a wound quickly instead of drawing it out and sags in relief when it's just Topher wanting to do a six month check up. When Sherlock comes home and find the envelope there is very nearly snarls at it. "DeWitt said that this would be between Topher and us." 

"It is," John reminds him from behind his laptop screen. "Topher wrote it, not DeWitt. I'm emailing Molly to see if we can use downstairs at Bart's to get this done." Topher won't come to England and John would really rather not go back to America. "You wouldn't mind doing the actual tests, would you? Topher's only going to be on webcam."

Sherlock doesn't even react to that. "You want to go back to Barts?" He is concerned and curious. With very good reason too. John has made a point to avoid St. Bart's as much as possible since coming back. He's gone in and out with Sherlock as needs be but has never managed to stay to long and certainly hasn't set foot on that side of the building since returning. 

"I have to get over it eventually, don't I?" he tries to sound lighthearted. "Plus I think Molly is still convinced I hate her." He was hurt that Molly had lied to him, and hurt that Sherlock had confided in her instead of him. The reasons and the logistics were all clear and as acceptable as they could be to him. Molly needed to understand that and not flee the room whenever she saw him coming.

Sherlock still looks uncomfortable but half agrees before heading into the kitchen to blow something up. John doesn't even complain about the smell. 

A week or so later, after the check has happened and John can know for sure that everything is just fine in his head, he takes Sherlock out to the pub down the corner. It someplace that he and Sherlock have never been to together before now. "I made a habit of sitting here for that," gesturing behind Sherlock and out the window. It gave a good vantage point of the entire area around where John had been standing on that day. "Helped me figure out what I could and couldn't see. Between that and the roof I mean." At Sherlock's raised eyebrow, John laughs. "Molly let me up," he explains. "Who do you think found your phone?"

The thought actually hadn't occurred to Sherlock. John can't help but smile in pride at that. "It's never going to end is it?" Sherlock asks.

"What?"

"This." He gestures between them and the place where Sherlock had seemed to die. "We'll never be free of this."

"Not really," John has to agree. Sherlock had started something when he'd jumped. He couldn't have dreamed that he'd be dealing with what he'd ended up dealing with when all was said and done but it was what it was. They may have had their last dealing with the Rossum Corporation but the aftershocks of everything would be with them forever. John can't say he'd never trust Sherlock the same way again but it is going to take time. Contrarily, Sherlock has learned several new things about John and how he is willing to react or adapt to these sort of deceptions. "We have two choices," he says. "We let the past haunt us or we take what we've learned from it and press on. What we have is never going be what we had then, but that doesn't mean that it has to be a bad thing."

This is one of what John is certain will be a handful of times where they both equally uncertain about the future. John doesn't see himself leaving Sherlock, even if he hadn't done what he'd done and had just sat here and waited. He couldn't leave Sherlock if he tried and he knows that may well be the death of him. He knows Sherlock knows it too and is now self aware enough to be terrified by the idea. John doesn't say that it's his choice or to not worry about it. He wasn't that sort of a man before and he's not going to become one now. He does say what he does believe. "I haven't walked out yet and I have every right to. You have the same right and haven't left either." He holds up a hand. "What I did was just as unfair, just as unselfish, and just as hurtful. I think, or rather I believe....sod it, I bloody _hope_ , that we're going to be stronger because of it. So long as none of us does anything so mad and stupid again."

"Promise?" The question is almost teasing but the eyes are serious. His next words are going to mean more than the world to both of them.

"As much I can promise anything, yes."

It's the right answer. Their food arrives and John raises a pint to Sherlock. "Cheers?"

"Cheers." Sherlock's glass clinks against his and, just like that, things finally fall into place. Some spots are well worn, others are new and sharp, but everything is in its right place at long last.

Remember this, John thinks. Remember this whenever things get bad. Just remember this if nothing else.


End file.
